History 419

Henry Ross Perot is an American businessman best known for running for President of the United States in 1992 and 1996.

• is an unspecified large majority of people in a country or group who do not express their opinions

• publicly. The term was popularized (though not first used) by U.S. President Richard Nixon in a November 3, 1969, speech in which he said,
• "And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support." In this usage it referred to those Americans who did not join in the large demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the time, who did not join in the counterculture, and who did not participate in public discourse. Nixon along with many others saw this group of Middle Americans as being overshadowed in the media by the more vocal minority.

• : Silent Spring is a book written by Rachel Carson. The book is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement and inspired widespread public concerns with pesticides and pollution of the environment. Silent Spring facilitated the ban of the pesticide DDT in 1972 in the United States. The
• book documented detrimental effects of pesticides on the environment, particularly on birds. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting industry claims uncritically.

• The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when people in the homosexual community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world. Within six months after the Stonewall riots, two gay activist organizations were formed in New York, concentrating on confrontational tactics, and three

• newspapers were established to promote rights for gays and lesbians. Within a few years, gay rights organizations were founded across the U.S. and the world. On June 28, 1970, the first Gay Pride marches took place in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York
• commemorating the anniversary of the riots. Similar marches were organized in other cities. Today, Gay Pride events are held annually throughout the world
• toward the end of June to mark the Stonewall riots.

• The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was proposed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983 to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic

• missiles. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic offense doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD).The ambitious
• initiative was "widely criticized as being unrealistic, even unscientific" as well as for threatening to destabilize MAD and re-ignite "an offensive arms race". It was soon derided as Star Wars, after the popular 1977 film by George Lucas. In 1987, the American Physical Society concluded that a global shield such as "Star Wars" was not only impossible with existing technology, but that ten more years of
• research was needed to learn whether it might ever be feasible.

• The Tet Offensive was a military campaign during the Vietnam War that began on January 31, 1968. Regular and irregular forces of the People's Army of Vietnam fought against the forces of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), the United States, and their allies. The purpose of the offensive was to strike military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam and to spark a general uprising among the population that would then topple the Saigon government, thus ending the war in a single blow. The operations are referred to as the Tet Offensive because they began during the early morning hours of 31 January 1968, the first day of the year on

• a traditional lunar calendar and the most important Vietnamese holiday. Both North and South Vietnam announced on national radio broadcasts that there would be a two-day cease-fire during the holiday. The initial attacks stunned the US and South Vietnamese armies and took them by surprise, but most were quickly contained and beaten back, inflicting massive casualties on communist forces. The Tet Offensive was important because it resulted in massive casualties on both sides and to a lot of Americans, it was a sign that the United States was actually losing the war
• against the North Vietnamese. It also showed the significance of Vietcong/Vietminh's military power and that nowhere in South Vietnam was safe. Before the Tet Offensive, the US military persuaded Americans that the US was winning the war, and many Americans began to become skeptical of what the US military said after. More and more Americans started to protest the Vietnam War and believed that the casualty rate was simply too high. While the US lost less than 3,000 troops during the Tet Offensive, compared to the North Vietnamese loss of tens of thousands, it was a major propaganda
• victory for the communists.

• The Watergate scandal was a political scandal from 1972-1974 in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. Effects of the scandal ultimately led to the resignation of the President of the United

• States, Richard Nixon, on August 9, 1974, the
• first and only resignation of any U.S. President. It also resulted in the indictment, trial, conviction and incarceration of several Nixon administration officials.