Era · 1945 – present
From the Cold War and the Space Race to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the world we live in today.
The State of Israel was proclaimed as the British Mandate for Palestine ended; it was quickly recognised by the United States and the Soviet Union, and neighbouring Arab states went to war.
Gandhi was killed; Godse and Apte were tried, convicted and hanged in 1949, and the assassination shocked India and the world.
Hiss was convicted of perjury on 21 January 1950 and sentenced to five years in prison; he maintained his innocence until his death.
Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform and went on to build a communist state independent of Soviet control.
President Beneš accepted a communist-dominated government on 25 February 1948, and Czechoslovakia became a one-party state in the Soviet bloc until 1989.
The Western powers supplied West Berlin entirely by air for over ten months; the Soviet Union lifted the blockade in May 1949 and Germany was divided into two states.
The first Olympics since 1936 were staged successfully on a small budget, with 59 nations and about 4,100 athletes.
A small archery competition for spinal injury patients grew into the International Stoke Mandeville Games and then the Paralympic movement.
The arrival of more than 800 Caribbean passengers became the symbolic start of large-scale post-war Commonwealth migration to Britain.
West Germany achieved rapid growth, near full employment and rising living standards, becoming Western Europe's largest economy by the 1960s.
The UN General Assembly adopted the declaration with 48 votes in favour, none against and eight abstentions, creating the founding text of international human rights.
Around 13 billion US dollars in aid helped restore Western European production, trade and political stability, and deepened the Cold War division of Europe.
