50 Fun Facts About Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman was which number president of the United States?

He served from 1945 to 1953, taking over from Franklin D. Roosevelt and handing off to Dwight Eisenhower.

What does the 'S' in Harry S. Truman stand for?

His grandfathers were Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young, so the lone letter nodded to both, a common Southern practice at the time.

In which town was Truman raised, and where he later returned to live after the presidency?

He was born in Lamar but the family moved to Independence when he was six so he could attend Presbyterian Sunday School.

Which instrument did young Truman practise at five o'clock every morning?

He was later famously photographed playing it at the National Press Club with actress Lauren Bacall perched on top.

Why was Truman refused an appointment to West Point?

At his later National Guard induction he read 20/50 in one eye and 20/400 in the other; he reportedly passed a second Army eye test by memorizing the chart.

In World War I, Truman commanded which unit in France?

The battery had a reputation for discipline problems, yet lost no men under his command and later presented him with a loving cup.

What kind of shop did Truman open in downtown Kansas City after the war?

He ran it with Edward Jacobson, a clothing clerk he had known from the army canteen; the store's failure left him in debt for years.

What was the first job title Truman won with Kansas City machine backing in 1922?

The 'court' was really an administrative county commission, not a judicial bench.

Which Kansas City political boss backed Truman's rise, leaving him branded the boss's own senator?

Pendergast controlled Kansas City from 1925 to 1939, when a conviction for income tax evasion sent him to federal prison for 15 months.

Truman was elected to the U.S. Senate in which year?

He was Pendergast's choice for the Democratic primary only after the boss's first four picks declined to run.

The wartime Truman Committee, which made him a national figure, investigated what?

It reportedly saved as much as $15 billion, and its work put Truman on the cover of Time magazine.

Whom did Truman replace as Franklin Roosevelt's running mate on the 1944 Democratic ticket?

Party bosses considered Wallace too far left; four years later Wallace ran against Truman on the Progressive ticket and won zero electoral votes.

How long had Truman been vice president when Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945?

In that time the two men met alone only twice, and Truman knew nothing of the atomic bomb program.

Who told Truman at the White House that the president had died?

When Truman asked if there was anything he could do for her, she famously replied that he was the one in trouble now.

Which secret weapons program did Truman first learn about in detail from Henry Stimson on April 25, 1945?

Stimson described it as 'the most terrible bomb in the history of the world'; Stalin, thanks to espionage, had known about it long before Truman did.

V-E Day, May 8, 1945, fell on which Truman milestone?

He was born on May 8, 1884, in Lamar, Missouri, the eldest child of a farmer and livestock dealer.

At which July 1945 conference did Truman learn the Trinity test had succeeded?

Held at Cecilienhof outside Berlin, it was the only time Truman and Stalin met face to face.

Who replaced Churchill as Britain's representative partway through the July 1945 Potsdam talks?

Labour's landslide result was announced on July 26 while the conference was still under way.

Truman authorized atomic bombs against which two Japanese cities?

He maintained for the rest of his life that the bombs saved lives on both sides by making an invasion unnecessary.

Which 1947 act signed by Truman created the CIA and an independent Air Force?

It also merged the War and Navy departments into what became the Department of Defense.

The Truman Doctrine of March 1947 initially pledged aid to which two countries?

Historians often date the start of the Cold War to that speech to Congress on March 12, 1947.

Roughly how much reconstruction aid did the Marshall Plan supply to Western Europe?

The Soviets answered with their own Molotov Plan for the Eastern bloc.

Where did George Marshall first outline the European recovery plan that took his name, in June 1947?

Marshall, Truman's secretary of state, was also his principal foreign policy adviser and later won the Nobel Peace Prize.

How did the Western allies respond when the Soviets blocked ground access to West Berlin in June 1948?

General Lucius Clay had proposed sending an armored column instead; the airlift became one of Truman's great foreign-policy successes.

How soon after Israel declared itself a nation on May 14, 1948, did Truman recognize it?

He did so over the objections of Secretary of State George Marshall, who feared it would cost the U.S. Arab oil.

Executive Order 9981, issued in July 1948, did what?

Army Secretary Kenneth Royall was forced into retirement in 1949 for still refusing to comply nearly a year later.

In June 1947 Truman became the first president to address which organization?

His administration's 1947 report To Secure These Rights laid out a ten-point civil rights agenda.

What was the name of the presidential rail car from which Truman gave his 1948 'whistle stop' speeches?

Bess joined the tour, and Truman introduced her to crowds as 'the Boss'.

Which newspaper printed the infamous 'Dewey Defeats Truman' headline?

Roughly 150,000 copies rolled off the presses before it was corrected; the paper had once called Truman a 'nincompoop'.

Where was Truman photographed holding up the erroneous headline?

He was on his train heading back to Washington and reportedly grinned, 'That ain't the way I heard it!'

Which Southern governor ran against Truman in 1948 on the Dixiecrat ticket and carried four states?

The walkout was triggered by the Democratic convention's civil rights plank; Thurmond finished with 39 electoral votes.

Who was Truman's running mate in 1948?

Truman really wanted Justice William O. Douglas, who turned him down, and settled on the Kentucky senator.

Truman's second inauguration in January 1949 broke what new ground?

Nine years later he also gave the first televised interview by a former president, on CBS.

What was Truman's domestic program of national health insurance and other liberal proposals called?

Only one of its major bills, the Housing Act of 1949, was ever enacted; the Korean War swallowed the rest.

On what date did North Korea invade South Korea, starting the war that dominated Truman's second term?

Truman went to the United Nations rather than Congress for authorization, and the war ended in a 1953 armistice.

Where did Truman fly to meet General Douglas MacArthur in October 1950?

MacArthur arrived the day before and greeted the president on the tarmac.

On which date did Truman relieve MacArthur of his commands?

MacArthur had leaked his plan to attack China to Republican House leader Joseph Martin; his hero's-welcome speech to Congress was dismissed by Truman in unprintable terms.

Where were the Trumans living when two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to assassinate the president in 1950?

The White House interior was being gutted and rebuilt, so the family had moved across Pennsylvania Avenue; Truman was napping upstairs when the shooting started.

Which White House policeman died in the 1950 attack on Truman's temporary residence after shooting an assailant?

Truman later commuted surviving gunman Oscar Collazo's death sentence to life; Jimmy Carter freed him in 1979.

Which 1952 Supreme Court case struck down Truman's seizure of the steel mills?

Truman had claimed commander-in-chief authority to keep munitions flowing to Korea; the ruling remains a landmark on the limits of presidential power.

Truman sent Washington Post critic Paul Hume a scathing letter after Hume panned whose concert?

Margaret was a coloratura soprano who later became a best-selling author of Washington murder mysteries.

Truman's approval rating hit what all-time low for a sitting president in February 1952?

Richard Nixon matched the figure in 1974, the year he resigned.

Who beat Truman in the 1952 New Hampshire primary, prompting his withdrawal 18 days later?

Truman disliked the Tennessee senator, whose hearings had exposed corruption in his administration.

The famous desk sign 'The Buck Stops Here' had what phrase on its reverse?

The sign was a gift from a poker-playing prison warden; Jimmy Carter later borrowed it for his own desk.

What did Truman add to the White House's south portico in 1948, over the Commission of Fine Arts' objections?

He paid the roughly $16,000 cost from his household account without asking Congress, and cartoonists joked it might cost him the election.

Which former president attended the 1957 dedication of the Truman Library?

At the time Hoover was the only other living former president; Truman kept an office at the library and sometimes answered the phone himself.

Which program did Johnson sign at the Truman Library, giving the first two cards to Harry and Bess?

Johnson chose the venue to honor Truman's failed fight for national health insurance in the late 1940s.

What yearly presidential pension did the 1958 Former Presidents Act create?

Historians now consider his poverty a myth: a 1953 draft will listed roughly $650,000 in land, bonds and cash.

Truman died on December 26, 1972, at what age?

He had been admitted to Kansas City's Research Hospital with pneumonia three weeks earlier; Bess outlived him by a decade and became the longest-lived first lady at 97.

Who played Truman in the 1995 HBO film based on David McCullough's Pulitzer-winning biography?

The film aired on September 9, 1995, and was directed by Frank Pierson.