Biggest Event in US History since WWII?

I have to write an essay for american-history on the biggest event in US history since WWII. My teacher used the following as examples and the ones below that are my ideas so far, I was wondering if anybody has topics they would recommend,

Thanks

 

I would say the Beatles, the Vietnam War, or the Manson Murders, or the birth of NASDAQ.

And the funny thing is, I'm not the least bit hippie, and in fact, look quite down upon the original hippie movement.
And I fucking hate the Beatles.

The way I see it, the Beatles led to the pop sound, which led to the easy commercialization of music - which is a much easier place to work from than the commercialization of the news (which started in the last 1800s) - to lead to the commercialization of fucking everything (remember it doesn't have to be right; just correct).
But I like music a lot, and it would be easy for me to bang out a whole report on it =P

As for the Vietnam War, and the Manson Murders - it was the failed hippie movement that led to yuppiedom and that is what made our world the clusterfuck it is today.

Or you can take it straight to the yuppies and just attack the birth of the NASDAQ.



September 11th is going to be done by everyone, so avoid that topic completely. The more popular a topic, the harsher the grades are going to be.

 

i'd agree with Monkey Boy... surely the above is THE biggest event in American History since WW2?...

 

^ you bring up a good point - what the hell does the teacher mean by biggest?

 

No kidding... "biggest event"... for who in America? For some people the biggest event might have been their marriage and two kids lol.

But from the sense of the OP's question, I would say that socially, the emergence of the internet has been tremendous.

 

That's a very good one, but I think computers in general is way bigger.

Actually, I think computers is my suggestion now =P

 

Maybe the rise and fall of the USSR, that spans the time since WW2 all the way up to today.

 

Event in a one day thing like 9/11? I mean that probably is the biggest, but you could also go with

-Battle of Yorktown(last big battle of the revolution)
-Battle of Gettysburg(turning point in civil war)
-Assassination of Lincoln(Lincoln favored a policy of reconciliation and getting the south back into the union as quick as possible, things went differently, both side still basically hate each other)
-Black Tuesday, Market crash of 1929(set in motion the great depression)
-Pearl Harbor(got us into WW2)
-Fall of the Berlin wall/USSR(lead America to being the world's sole superpower)

 

Assasination of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King. There was definately an alternate universe that we never got to live.

 

That would be my choice. The entire social and psychological fabric of America changed forever, much more than from the Towers, in my opinion.

It's a tough call to pick just one event, though. Some other possibilities:

the Vietnam War
Joseph McCarthy's Senate hearings on communism
the Freedom Riders' march into Birmingham
Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat
development of the oral contraceptive
Cuban Missile Crisis
founding of McDonald's
Watergate
founding of Israel
IBM personal computer
Civil Rights Act of 1964
founding of OPEC and the oil embargo of 1973
Jackie Robinson and the integration of professional sports
Brown vs Board of Education in 1954
Roe vs Wade

etc, etc, etc.

 

Good list.The oil embargo of '73 you mentioned,seems to me , the point at which the oil companies and the large oil producing countries (in collusion)realized that just about anything could be done to the citizens of the world and no one could or would do anything about it.Kind of a tipping point.Then ,in turn as seen over the last 30 some-odd years,other industries realized that people had been pacified into willing CONSUMERS (such a cold and utilitatarian term)and joined in raising and raising prices until we were/are paying ridiculously large prices for commodities and even leisure time activities(autos,sports,homes,fuel,ect).We finally reached the point of exhaustive collapse .Simultaniously,elements of our (US) government began reducing oversight and regulation of the financial centers,allowed companies to go overseas without tariffs on the return of their products, politicized and weakened any consumer protection agencies and the greed-heads saw that stripping us of our wealth through trickery,war and law,or the lack thereof,was business as usual.I believe '1973 was a very pivotal point in where we are today.

 

The OPEC oil embargo was an economic 9/11. And like the attacks on the Towers, there's almost nothing to prevent it from happening again.

 

The powerfull abide.They reap what we sow.

 

Splitting my guts out laughing.
Madcap Syd thinks the Battle of Yorktown was after World War II (assuming he read the thread title).
Yellow Cab thinks the rise and fall of the USSR happened after World War II.
Duck thinks NASDAQ is somehow critically important.
Staples mentions "My teacher used the following as examples and the ones below that are my ideas so far," but then fails to present any list.

Keep going! You guys are great!

 

Well the USSR had a boom after the war or maybe I was paying less attention in school than I thought. You somehow dont know about the expansion of the Eastern block Soviet satellite countries? I was not talking about the Russian revolution, before WW2 Russia was not considered a dominating world power much like the United States was not. In fact if the United States kept fighting east right after the war we probably would have went right through them. Now I seem to remember back in the 80's the Soviet Union kind of collapsing for a wide variety both internal and external reasons, but again maybe you know something the rest of us do not.

 

i'd say vietnam, that caused so many things to happen in the u.s... but 9/11 is what any ignoramus would say

 

You're right. Bringing down the WTC hasn't had nearly the long-term impact nation-wide that the assassinations did. They confiscate your toothpaste at the airport (I don't fly anymore ... do they still do that?), but other than that, it's pretty much business as usual as far as I can tell.

 

^^Aren't you forgetting a little place called Afghanistan and the people who come home in body bags from there on a pretty regular basis?

And yes, they still do take away your toothpaste and any other liquids. Thats just here in Britain. In the US they also like to do retinal scans from what I hear.