The entirety of the referenced line reads as follows:

"Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."

On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese attacked the US Pacific Fleet, launching America into World War II.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union over nuclear missiles in Cuban locations during October of 1962.  John F. Kennedy was president from 1961 until his death in November of 1963.

 Kennedy’s line came in a 1963 speech in West Berlin that sought to show solidarity with the “free people” of Berlin.  It was also widely seen as a speech which stood against any sense of Soviet aggression in East Germany.  Kennedy’s marked anti-communism and Berlin’s place in the Cold War are important starting points to rule out answer choices that do not indicate either of those facts.

Following the culmination of World War II, the economies of Europe were heavily ravaged by the effects of war. The Marshall Plan, implemented in 1948, was designed to assist these countries economically and re-build them to close to their pre-war strength. The intention was to prevent the Western countries from embracing Communism which was taking hold throughout, the even more impoverished, Eastern Europe.

The Contras were an anti-Communist force dedicated to overthrowing the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, led by Daniel Ortega.  The Reagan administration had attempted to fund the Contras by selling Arms to Iran, despite an Embargo on trade there since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.  The Scandal was discovered in November 1986 after Iranian elements leaked information of the arms sales.

The Kellogg-Briand pact was the brain child of United States Secretary of State Frank Kellogg in 1928. It was a treaty, signed by many nations, including the Soviet Union, which officially renounced war as a means of national policy. Although proposed by a United States’ representative, it did not gain majority support in American society and the U.S. continued to heavily invest in its military throughout peacetime. 

Several decades of American interference and militaristic action had soured relations heavily between the United States and Latin America by the time of JFKs inauguration in 1960. To combat this Kennedy proposed a ten-year plan called the Alliance for Progress, which he hoped would halt and reverse this trend. The plan called for political stabilization in the region, economic co-operation and generous American aid. Although the plan did help play a role in the growth of Latin American domestic output in the 1960s and 1970s, lack of support from later Presidents and an unwillingness on the part of many Latin American governments to agree to American proposals ultimately lead the plan to be viewed as a failure. 

The name given to the crisis that began with the Islamist students' taking of the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran, is called the Iran Hostage Crisis. 

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The stated aims of the Treaty are to prevent the spread of nuclear weaponry to new countries, to co-operate on the peaceful use of nuclear technology, and to encourage the trend of gradual nuclear disarmament.

In the 1950s the United States found itself needing to fill a power vacuum in the Middle East, following the withdrawal of France and Great Britain. The threat of Soviet influence, or direct control, prompted President Eisenhower to issue a speech that would soon come to be known as the Eisenhower Doctrine. It promised economic and military aid to countries in the Middle East. As well as, assurances that the United States would provide aid and possibly troops to any sovereign nation threatened with invasion by a Communist regime.