The Cold War era started in 1945 and ended in 1991. There were several events and important milestones that affected various countries during this so-called “war”. Two countries played a major role in the Cold war and they were the Soviet Union and the United States of America. There were many historical events that had happened during the cold war. After the Yalta Conference which was held in February 1945 the Cold war began. In the same year, the United States used the first atomic bomb in August 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. As the Soviet Union and Japan go to war with each other, exactly after one week, Japan surrenders. Then in June 1947, the Marshall Plan was announced. The communists took over Czechoslovakia in February 1948. Later in the year, in June 1948 the Berlin blockade began. In 1949, the Soviet Union uses the first atomic bomb in September so now both superpowers had nuclear weapons. Then in 1950 the Korean War began in which America successfully contained the spread of communism after a three year war. In 1954 Russia establishes the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti) which was the Committee for State Security of the USSR. In the same year in July 1954 Vietnam split into communist and nationalist factions. Then in May of 1955 the Warsaw Pact was signed. In October 1957 the Sputnik was launched in space by the Russians. Americans had no clue what Sputnik could do and so they thought the Russians were using Sputnik to spy