Cold War

On March 12 1947 President Harry Truman addressed Congress requesting military and economic aid for Greece and Turkey, both threatened by communist movements. He articulated what became known as the…

Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, sits on the eastern seaboard of North America — on the Potomac River's banks, between the Appalachian Mountains to the west and the Atlantic coast…

This is Berlin, the capital of Germany, sitting on the flat North European Plain roughly halfway between the Rhine River to the west and the Polish border to the east. Beginning in June 1948, the…

Washington, D.C., on the eastern seaboard of the United States — sitting between the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay lowlands, exactly where the title clue pointed — was where the North Atlantic…

On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China at a ceremony held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing…

The site was the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeastern Kazakhstan — deep in the Eurasian steppe, east of the Urals and north of the Tian Shan mountains, exactly as the clues described. In August…

The Korean Peninsula — a finger of land hanging from northeastern Asia between the Yellow Sea to the west and the Sea of Japan to the east — was the battleground of the Korean War, which began in…

This event unfolded in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, situated on the eastern seaboard of North America between the Appalachian Mountains to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to…

Enewetak Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean, sits roughly equidistant between the Asian continent to the west and the Hawaiian island chain to the east — exactly the…

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for passing classified information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. Despite international protests and appeals…

Washington, D.C. — the capital of the United States, perched on the Potomac River along the Atlantic seaboard between the Appalachian Mountains and the sea — was the stage for the 1954 Army-McCarthy…

Warsaw, the capital of Poland, sits on the Vistula River in the heart of the North European Plain — exactly the flat, open corridor between the Baltic Sea to the north and the Carpathian Mountains…

This conflict unfolded across Vietnam, a long, S-shaped country on the eastern edge of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia — flanked by the South China Sea to the east and sharing borders with…

This is Budapest, the capital of Hungary — a city split by the Danube River, sitting in the Carpathian Basin roughly halfway between the Alps to the west and the Carpathian Mountains curving around…

This is Alexandria, Egypt — on the Mediterranean's southern edge where northeastern Africa faces Europe across a narrow sea, at the northern mouth of the canal that cuts through the isthmus…

The Suez Crisis, also known as the second Arab–Israeli war, the Tripartite Aggression in the Arab world, and the Sinai War in Israel, was a British–French–Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956. Israel…

The launch site sits at Baikonur, Kazakhstan, deep in the steppe grassland that stretches between the Caspian Sea to the west and the Aral Sea to the east. On 3 November 1957, the Soviet Union…

The launch site is Baikonur Cosmodrome, located in what is now Kazakhstan — a vast, flat, semi-arid steppe basin lying between the Caspian Sea to the west and the former Aral Sea to the east, deep in…

This event unfolded in Berlin, the historic capital sitting on the North European Plain in what was then divided Germany — a country flanked by the Rhine to the west and the Oder River marking its…

The Bay of Pigs sits on the southern coast of Cuba — the largest island in the Caribbean, lying roughly 150 kilometres south of Florida across the Straits of Florida. In April 1961, around 1,500…

This was Havana, Cuba — the island nation sitting in the Caribbean Sea just 90 miles south of the Florida peninsula, exactly where those reconnaissance flights detected the missiles. In 1962, U.S…

Moscow, the capital of Russia (then the Soviet Union), sits on the East European Plain roughly 900 kilometres east of the Baltic Sea, deep inside the largest country on Earth by land area. In 1963…

Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia — sitting in a temperate river basin right in the landlocked heart of Central Europe, south of the Baltic Sea and north of the great curving arc of the Danube…

Cape Kennedy — now Cape Canaveral — sits on a narrow barrier-island strip along Florida's Atlantic coast, at the southeastern tip of the North American peninsula where it juts toward the Caribbean…

Beijing, the capital of the People's Republic of China, sits on the North China Plain — exactly that broad lowland stretching between the Gobi Desert to the north and the Himalayan plateau to the…

This is Luanda, the capital of Angola — a port city on the Atlantic coast of southwestern Africa, sitting just north of the Tropic of Capricorn on the side of the continent that faces South America…

This was Helsinki, Finland — a city perched on a rocky peninsula where the Baltic Sea narrows into the Gulf of Finland, directly south of the Scandinavian landmass and north across the water from…

This is Kabul, the high-altitude capital of Afghanistan — a landlocked nation sitting in the heart of Asia, where the Hindu Kush mountains divide Central Asia from the Indian subcontinent, east of…

This event unfolded in Gdańsk, a port city on Poland's Baltic coast, where the flat North European Plain reaches the southern edge of the Baltic Sea — the inland sea separating Scandinavia from the…

Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, sits on the Potomac River along the Atlantic coastal plain of eastern North America, roughly midway between the Appalachian Mountains to the west…

This is Berlin, the capital of Germany, sitting in the broad North European Plain between the Rhine basin to the west and the Oder River — the natural boundary with Poland — to the east. On November…

This event unfolded in Moscow, Russia — the capital city sitting on the flat East European Plain, roughly equidistant between the Baltic Sea to the northwest and the Caspian Sea to the southeast, at…