United States History - GED Social Studies

Over 80% the worlds 1 billion+ Muslims belong to the Sunni tradition. Around 10-15% belong to the Shia tradition. The two factions originally split over who should rightly succeed the prophet Muhammad upon his death as the leader of the Muslim community. Those who would come to be known as Sunnis backed the eventual successor Abu Bakr, and those who would come to be known as Shiites backed Muhammad's son-in-law, Ali, who would also come to power before being assassinated. The term "Shia" is derived from the term for "party of Ali" in Arabic. From this political split, Sunni and Shia Islam diverged in a number of ways in their respective practices of Islam. This division has historically been a tremendous source of strife between the two groups. Iraq is physically located on the border between the Arab-speaking, Sunni-professing region of the Middle East and the historical center of Shia belief in Persian speaking Iran. As a result, Iraq is a majority Shia country, but the country holds a very large Sunni minority and is subject to foreign influence from its many Sunni neighbors. The Sunni/Shia split is a major determinant of Iraqi politics.

The Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979 took place, of course, in Iran. It involved the kidnap of just over 50 American diplomats and citizens. The hostage situation lasted for 444 days before the American hostages were finally released. It is seen as one of the seminal moments in the beginnings of American involvement in the Middle East, as well as a notable incident of Carter’s presidency.

Of these answer choices the Iranian Revolution only led "directly" to the Oil Crisis of 1979. The Oil Crisis of 1973 was a result of various members of OPEC announcing an oil embargo. The Crisis of 1979 occurred as a result of changes in Iran’s openness to western economic intervention and the conflict that broke out between Iraq and Iran, which led both countries to limit supply of oil. The crisis led to a recession in the United States in 1979 and 1980 and propelled the Soviet Union into the position of the number one oil supplier in the world.

In World War Two, the Axis Powers were Germany, Japan, and Italy. They fought against the Allied Powers of Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union.

The Potsdam Conference took place in occupied Germany during the waning days of the Second World War. It was attended by all the Allied Powers, although focus tends to go towards President Truman, representing the United States, Josef Stalin, representing the Soviet Union, and Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and later Clement Attlee, representing Great Britain. The Allied Powers met to decide how to punish Germany and how to rebuild the world after the war.

The Triple Entente, entente meaning "friendship" in French, was cemented by the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907. The French and Russians had already entered into an alliance in 1894, while the UK and Frace had put an end to centuries of imperial animosity in 1904. In addition to ending competition between the three constituent powers, the alliance that formed on the basis of the agreements provided for military cooperation as well. The Triple Entente also came about as a geo-political counterweight to the power wielded over Central Europe by the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. The web of alliances that spread over most of Europe has long been thought to have been one of the precipitating factors that led to the spread of war across the continent in WWI.

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, by President Abraham Lincoln. The Proclamation formally stated that the slaves living in the territories currently in open rebellion were now and forever free.

The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in 1962, when the Soviet Union installed nuclear weapons in Cuba, less than ninety miles from United States’ soil. The American President at the time was John F. Kennedy, and the leader of the Soviet Union was Nikita Khrushchev. The result of the incident was that the Soviet Union ended up withdrawing it’s nuclear weapons from Cuba under the agreement that the United States would remove its from Turkey. For the short period of time that the Cuban Missile Crisis raged, it is generally considered to be the closest that the two superpowers got to nuclear annihilation during the long Cold War.

Sputnik was a Soviet satellite. It was the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth. This took place in 1957 and began the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States. Sputnik was important, geopolitically speaking, for promoting panic in the United States that America was getting left behind by the more scientifically and technologically advanced Soviets. It can be seen as the reason why America landed on the moon only twelve years later.

Although the Bay of Pigs Invasion was planned during the Presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, it was not actually carried out until 1961, during the Presidency of John F. Kennedy. It was a failed American invasion of Cuba and is important in the larger context of the Cold War for solidifying the complete deterioration of American relations with Cuba and for precipitating the Cuban Missile Crisis only a year later.

The Bay of Pigs invasion took place in 1961. The CIA trained exiled Cuban troops that then touched down on Cuban soil with the intention of overthrowing the Cuban government and assassinating Fidel Castro. It did not succeed.

Yuri Gagarin was the first human in outer space. He was a citizen of the Soviet Union and was the first man to orbit the earth in 1961. His achievement was part of the early years of the Space Race when the Soviet Union was the first nation to put a satellite into orbit and the first to put a man into space.

The Great Society was a series of domestic programs and reforms instituted under President Lyndon B. Johnson. These are not to be confused with the New Deal programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt, although the two had somewhat similar goals. Part of the Great Society reforms were the extension of Medicare and Medicaid, the Civil Rights Acts, and the War on Poverty.

The Democratic National Convention of 1968 is notable primarily for the fact that the delegates in attendance voted against a resolution to end the war in Vietnam—refusing to make it part of their electoral platform. This sparked a massive conflagration between protesters and armed police, as well as national guardsmen. Although Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, this did not take place at the Democratic National Convention.

The Kent State Massacre took place in 1970. The late 1960s and early 1970s was a period of intense student activism in the United States. Students were protesting for advances in civil rights and equality, but also for an end to American involvement in the Vietnam War. Many students believed that it was absurd and immoral that so many young people should die in a war that did not directly affect American lives. The Kent State Massacre involved the killing of four students by the Ohio National Guard and furthered the divide between the mainstream and the counter-culture in American society.

The Cold War, which waged from the end of the Second World War until the fall of the Soviet Union, was primarily a conflict between capitalism and communism. It was essentially a conflict to see which economic system would become dominant in the world following the Second World War. The terms "democracy" and "socialism" are the two political systems that usually match with the economic systems of capitalism and communism, although it is possible to have a society that is both democratic and communist.

The first leader of Communist China was Mao Zedong. Mao was the founder of the Chinese Communist Party and the first ruler of the People’s Republic of China, which he governed from 1949 until 1976—when he died. Mao is notable for his role in the Chinese Civil War, leading the attack against the nationalists led by Chiang Kai-Shek. He is also notable for committing numerous atrocities, such as the Cultural Revolution, and for instituting the Great Leap Forward, designed to modernize the Chinese economy and solidify the hold of communism.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, ushered the country out of the Cold War and into an era of reforms and diminishing influence. His two major reforms are referred to as Glasnost and Perestroika. Glasnost was Gorbachev’s attempts to allow for greater political freedom; Perestroika was his attempt to restructure the soviet economy.

Joseph McCarthy was a United States senator in the late 1940s and early 1950s who famously led the crusade against prominent American communists. This period of American history is often referred to as The Red Scare, and the policy of attacking any known or suspected communists in Congress is called McCarthyism.