The next significant event that happened was the Great Depression. Most of the money borrowed to finance the war came from the United States. Share prices reached a peak in August 1929, then started to dip. When they were still falling in October, investors began to panic and sold their shares for whatever they could get. Reckless selling make prices fall still further and thousands of investors lost all their money. This is called the Wall Street Crash and started an economic crisis as banks and businesses closed down, throwing people out of work. The situation was made worse as a servere drought hit the agricultural states of the Midwest. The Dust Bowl was a vast area where the rich topsoil, worn away by droughts and overfarming, turned to dust and blew away in the wind. Nothing would grow, and many farms were abandoned. The U.S. economic crisis soon affected the whole world. At the height of the Depression in 1932, world exports of raw materials had fallen by over 70 percent. Mass unemployment led to many being made homeless, reduced to living in shanty towns of tin and cardboard, called Hoovervilles after President Herbert Hoover. In 1933, however, a new government led by Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced the New Deal. It included the financial support for farmers and a construction program to create more jobs. In 1941, the Great Depression ends and full employment returns to the U.S. as it enters World War 2.
World War 2 started on September 3, 1939, two days after Adolf Hitler had sent troops to invade Poland. The U.S. enters the war in 1941, following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, in which four battleships were destroyed, many more damaged and 3,300 people killed. It took until August 1944 to expel the last German troops from the Soviet soil, by which time they were needed in the west to defend Germany itself from an Allied invasion. The Allied invasion of Europe started on June 6, 1944 and by July 2, one million troops had landed in Normandy and started to advance toward Germany. Hitler commited suicide on April 30. Soviet troops captured Berlin two days later and on May 7 the Germans signed a general surrender at Reims in France. This became official on May 9 when it was signed in Berlin. Although the war in Europe was ended, fighting in Asia continued. An atomic bomb was dropped by the USA on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and three days later a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing thousands and thousands more died later from radiation sickness, burns, and other injuries. Five days later, the Japanese government under Emperor Hirohito surrendered and on August 14, World War 2 ended.
The United States of America and the Soviet Union emerged from World War 2 as the world's dominant superpowers. Even though they had fought together against the Axis powers, they soon became enemies in what was known as the Cold War. The Cold War started whent the Soviet Union set up communist governments in the countries of Eastern Europe liberated by the Red Army. Although there was a lot of events that happened during the Cold War the most major ones were, the Korean War in 1950 through 1953, the production of the Berlin Wall in 1961, and the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
During the 1950s, the space race began, between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union launched teh first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. Laika the dog was the first animal in space, who was aboard the Sputnik 1 in 1957. Then in 1958, the U.S. launches the first satellite, Explorer 1. In 1962, the U.S. launched the first communications satellite. Three years later, Alexi Leonov, a russian cosmonaut, becomes the first person to walk in space. Then in 1969, Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to land on the Moon.
Another Significant event that happened during Arthur Miller's time period was the Civil Rights Act. Black people were especially discriminated against in education, employment, housing, transportation, and health care. They were not allowed to vote to try and change their situation. All they could do was protest and campaign. Some of the earliest protests were in the southern United States. They started in 1955 when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move from a seat reserved for whites on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This led to a boycott fo the local bus service that lasted for over a year. In 1957, many civil groups were brought together by the Southern Christian Leaders Conference, led by Martin Luther King. Then in 1963 Martin Luther King, organizes a march to Washington, D.C., asking for equal rights for everybody. The Civil Rights Act is passed in the United States to end all discrimination because of race, color, religion, or national origin in 1964. Also in 1963. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald.
Around the same time the Civil Rights Act was going on, there was also conflict going on in Vietnam. In 1965, the U.S. sends troops to South Vietnam to defend them against the North taking over. The U.S. withdrew 25,000 of its 540,000 troops from Vietnam, but the fighting and the antiwar protests, continued. Then in 1973, a cease-fire is agreed and the U.S. withdraws its troops by the end of the year, but the Vietnamese continue to fight. The communists take control of the whole country Vietnam in 1957.
During Arthur Miller's time there were many changes in the United States as well as the rest of the world. He has seen changes in government, transportation, finances, and technology. The things I have listed here are just a few of the significant things that have happened during his life time.
