Curated playlist
Cold War terminology
- Western BlocThe Cold War's self-styled Free World also backed dictators. The Western Bloc backed coups in Iran and Chile.
- McCarthyismJoseph McCarthy waved a paper in 1950 and claimed it listed 205 communists in the State Department.
- Three-world modelThe First and Second Worlds had no numbers until someone named the Third World in 1952.
- Warsaw PactThe Warsaw Pact's only two military actions targeted its own members. Hungary's 1956 exit bid was crushed.
- Third WorldThe term Third World began in a 1952 French magazine article. Demographer Alfred Sauvy coined it.
- Sputnik 1Most people who watched Sputnik 1 cross the sky actually saw its rocket. The satellite itself was barely visible.
- Second WorldThe term Second World now can label countries that never had anything to do with the Soviet Union.
- Deterrence theoryThe people who ran nuclear deterrence said luck, not skill, kept the Cold War from ending in nuclear war.
- Iron CurtainWinston Churchill did not coin the phrase iron curtain. Queen Elisabeth of Belgium used it first, in 1914.
- First WorldThe term First World began as a Cold War weapon, not a measure of wealth.
- We will bury youKhrushchev's "We will bury you" may have been a prediction, not a threat.
- Strategic Defense InitiativeRonald Reagan's 1983 speech asked scientists to make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete."
- Domino theoryThe domino theory began as a casual image offered at a news conference on the 7th of April 1954. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had been asked about communism in Indochina. He answered by describing a row of dominoes set on end. Knock over…