| 1945 | Cold war begins |
| 1947 | India and Pakistan win independence from Britain |
| 1948 | State of Israel is established |
| 1949 | Mao Zedong leads Communist revolution in China; Simone de Beauvoir publishes The Second Sex |
| 1950 | Korean War begins |
| 1953 | Stalin dies; Korean War ends |
| 1954 | Brown v. Board of Education prohibits segregated schools in the United States; Vietnamese forces defeat French at Dien Bien Phu |
| 1956 | General Abdel Nasser nationalizes Suez Canal; uprising in Hungary against USSR |
| 1957 | Boris Pasternak publishes Doctor Zhivago; USSR launches Sputnik; Treaty of Rome establishes European Economic Community (Common Market) |
| 1958 | Fifth Republic begins in France |
| 1962 | United States and USSR face off in the Cuban missile crisis |