October 21st, 1950: china occupied Tibet; in 1959 the Dalai Lama fled to India.

June 25th, 1950: Communist North Korea, supported by the USSR, invaded South Korea, beginning the Korean war.

March 8th, 1951: Mohammed Mossadegh became prime Minister of Iran. Twp years later he was overthrown in a coup; Muhammad Reza Shah was restores to power.

July 23rd, 1952: A revolution in Egypt overthrew the monarchy and established a Republic; General Abdul Nasser took power in 1954.

March 5th, 1953: Stalin's death followed a power struggle in then USSR; his successor Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin's regime.

May 7th, 1954: Ho chi Minh's communist Vietminh army defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu, leading to the Partition of Vietnam.

May 17th, 1954: Us Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in schools.

November 3rd, 1954: Start of the eight-year Algerian War; recall of de Gaulee as French premier, one million Algerians killed.

May 14th, 1955: Warsaw Treaty signed, establishing the Warsaw Pact.

July 26th, 1956: Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal.

November 4th, 1956: Hungarian uprising brutally quashed by Soviet tanks.

March 6th, 1957: The British colony of the Gold coast (Ghana) was the first black African nation to receive its independence.

March 25th, 1957: The Treaty of Rome established the European Economic Community (EEC).

October 4th, 1957: The USSR beat the US in the space race, launching Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, into space.

1958: Mao launched the Great Leap Forward in china to speed up industrialisation, destroying the Chinese economy.

January 1st, 1959: Fidel Castro ousted the Batista regime and proclaimed a new government for Cuba.