One of the famous quotations linked to the date June 26th is a line President John F. Kennedy spoke in German on June 26, 1963: “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Kennedy…
Category: Cold War
Origins of the term “brinkmanship” (aka “brinksmanship”)…
I recently noticed a headline for an Associated Press story about North Korea that was interesting from a word and quotation history perspective. It said: “North Korean missile tests…
The origins of the “The Domino Effect”…
Contrary to what many sites on the Internet say, President Dwight D. Eisenhower did not coin the famous Cold War term “the Domino Effect.” He did use the phrase “falling…
The origins of the Cold War term “hot line” and the mythical “red phones”…
Many books and websites note that the famed “hot line” communication link between the Pentagon and the Kremlin was established on August 30, 1963. Press reports about this new tool,…
“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall…”
When Columbia Records released the first, self-titled album by Bob Dylan in 1962 it went largely unnoticed by the general public. Only about 5,000 copies were sold at the time.…
On this date, Ronald Reagan gave his famous “evil empire” speech—but he didn’t coin the phrase…
If you’re like me, you’re a tired of hearing about Donald Trump and Russia. However, as I was editing this post today on March 8, 2017, I couldn’t help being…
“We will bury you!” (Or something like that.)
On November 18, 1956, Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev, the head of the Soviet Union, attended a party at the Polish Embassy in Moscow. At that event, he made some boasting…
“I coulda been a contender!”
When On the Waterfront was first released to American movie theaters on July 28, 1954, the film’s director, Elia Kazan, was worried about how well it would do on opening…
“Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”
On April 19, 1951, General Douglas MacArthur made a high-profile “farewell address” to a joint meeting of both houses of Congress. Eight days earlier, he’d been fired as the top…