World Politics (President Gaitan)

1948

April: The Organization of American States (OAS) is created in Bogotá.

May:Israel is declared as an independent state.

Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia attack Israel.

June: The Berlin Blockade begins.

July: President Harry S. Truman issues the second peacetime military draft in the United States amid increasing tensions with the Soviet Union (the first peacetime draft occurred in 1940 under President Roosevelt).

December: The Universal Human Rights Declaration is adopted by the United Nations.

U.S. President signs Executive Order 9981, ending segregation in the United States Armed Forces.

1949

April: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) if formed.

Southern Ireland leaves Commonwealth and becomes the Republic of Ireland.

May: Israel is admitted to the United Nations.

The Soviet Union lifts its Blockade of Berlin.

June: Beginning of Apartheid — The South African Citizenship Act suspends the granting of citizenship to British Commonwealth immigrants after five years and imposes a ban on mixed marriages

August: Buthan becomes independent.

September: Federal Republic of Germany officially founded. Konrad Adenauer is the first federal chancellor.

Soviet Union vetoes United Nations membership of Ceylon, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Jordan and Portugal.

Octuber: Birth of the People's Republic of China.

Democratic Republic of Germany DDR established officially.

November: The Indian Constituent Assembly adopts India's constitution.

December: Queen Juliana of the Netherlands grants Indonesia sovereignty.

First meeting of the Council of Europe.

Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb.

1950

February: Two Vietcong battalions attack a French base in Indochina.

1951

1952

March: In Cuba, Fulgencio Batista staged a bloodless coup d'état on March 10, 1952, removing Carlos Prio Socarras (elected in 1948) and becoming President. The new government received diplomatic recognition from the United States, a number of American corporations continued to swell in Cuba, and the island became a major tourist destination, attracting unprecedented prosperity for the island. But the economic depressions of the 1950s and Batista's corruption, particularly his unsettlingly close relationship with the Havana Mafia, saw a rise in opposition to his regime, particularly from poorer Cubans and younger-generation, middle-class Marxist thinkers who felt marginalized in their own country.

1953

1954

1955

1956

1957

1958

1959

1960

1961

1962

1963

Negotiations put an end to the Cuban Civil War. Batista would leave the presidential office in 1964.

1964

1965

1966

1967

1968

1969

1970

A ballot held in Cuba favours the annexation to the United States. Cuba formally applies to annexation and statehood. US congress approves annexation under a commonwealth status and the question of statehood would follow negotiations.

1982

In a referendum to chose the Puerto Rican status, the Statehood option wins a plurality of the votes (48%) over the Commonwealth status (47%). The Independence option barely got a 4% figure.

1986

Cuba was admitted in March as the 51^st state of the United States of America.

Puerto Rico was admitted in November as the 52^nd state of the United States of America.