50 Fun Facts About Harry S. Truman

Who won the 1952 election to succeed Truman as president?

Dwight Eisenhower followed Truman, the 33rd president, into office; a 1947 diary entry shows Truman had once offered to run as the general's vice president on a Democratic ticket.

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

Nothing in particular: his parents settled on a bare S as a compromise between the names of his two grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young.

In which Missouri town did Truman grow up and later retire after his presidency?

Independence: the family moved there in 1890, and at the First Presbyterian Sunday school young Harry met Bess Wallace, the girl he would marry in 1919.

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

Piano: he practised two hours before school and dreamed of becoming a concert pianist, later admitting that as a boy he was 'kind of a sissy'.

Why was Truman refused an appointment to West Point?

Poor eyesight kept him out: nearly blind without his thick glasses, he got into the Missouri National Guard in 1905 by memorizing the eye chart.

In World War I, Captain Truman led what kind of unit into action in France?

An artillery battery: Battery D of the 129th Field Artillery was known as the regiment's unruliest, yet Captain Truman took it through the Meuse-Argonne fighting without losing a man.

What kind of shop did Truman open in Kansas City after returning from World War I?

A haberdashery: the men's clothing store he ran with army friend Eddie Jacobson failed in the early-1920s slump, and Truman refused bankruptcy, paying off his share of the debts over some fifteen years.

Which office, his first, did Truman win in 1922 with the backing of Kansas City's Democratic machine?

County Court judge of Jackson County was an administrative job, not a judicial one: Truman handled budgets and roads like a commissioner, lost the seat in 1924 and came back as presiding judge in 1926.

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

Tom Pendergast ran Kansas City's Democratic machine until a 1939 tax-evasion conviction; Truman stayed loyal, and as the new vice president in 1945 drew criticism for attending the disgraced boss's funeral.

During his 1948 campaign, what scornful label did Truman pin on the Republican-led 80th Congress?

The Do-Nothing Congress: Truman recalled it for a special session in July 1948, daring Republicans to pass their own platform, and happily agreed when a reporter called the result a do-nothing session.

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

Waste in defense contracts: before proposing the committee he set out alone in his own car to inspect army camps for himself. Its hearings went on to save taxpayers billions of dollars.

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

Henry A. Wallace was too liberal for party leaders, who feared the ailing Roosevelt might not survive a fourth term. Wallace ran against Truman in 1948 and won no electoral votes.

Truman had been vice president only 82 days when Roosevelt died at which retreat?

Warm Springs, Georgia, was where Roosevelt collapsed while sitting for a portrait. In his 82 days as vice president, Truman had met alone with him only twice.

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

Eleanor Roosevelt broke the news herself. When Truman asked if he could do anything for her, she turned the question around: what could they do for him, 'for you are the one in trouble now'.

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

The Manhattan Project would soon yield 'the most terrible weapon ever known in human history', Stimson's memo warned. As vice president, Truman had been told nothing about it.

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

His 61st birthday came less than a month into his presidency. He opened his victory broadcast by wishing that Franklin Roosevelt had lived to witness the day.

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

Potsdam, just outside Berlin, is where Truman told Stalin about a powerful new weapon. Stalin barely reacted, because Soviet spies had already told him about the bomb.

Which Labour politician replaced Churchill as prime minister midway through the July 1945 Big Three summit?

Clement Attlee took Churchill's seat after Labour's landslide was announced on July 26, with the summit still running. British voters had turned Churchill out within three months of victory in Europe.

Which Japanese city did Truman agree to strike from the atomic target list because of its cultural importance?

Kyoto topped the target list until Secretary of War Henry Stimson went over the generals' heads to Truman. Nagasaki was added in its place in late July.

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

The National Security Act was signed aboard Truman's presidential plane, the Sacred Cow, so the Air Force was born on an aircraft. It also put the Army and Navy under one secretary of defense.

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

Greece and Turkey had both leaned on British aid, which London announced it could no longer afford. Truman asked Congress for $400 million and pledged to back free peoples resisting subjugation.

Which wartime ally received the largest share of the Marshall Plan's $13 billion in aid?

Britain pocketed the largest share of any nation. West Germany, often pictured as the plan's big winner, received considerably less.

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

Harvard University heard it in a short speech on June 5, 1947. Marshall brought no finished plan: he asked the European nations to draw up their own recovery program and proposed that America pay for it.

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

An airlift of supplies carried food and fuel into West Berlin for more than ten months, and at its height a plane was landing or taking off every 30 seconds. The Soviets lifted the blockade in May 1949.

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

Eleven minutes after the declaration, the White House announced recognition. Truman overrode Secretary of State George Marshall, whose department feared Arab nations would cut oil supplies in return.

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

Desegregated the armed forces: Southern senators had threatened to filibuster his civil rights bills, so Truman acted by executive order. The military dragged its feet, but almost all units were integrated by the end of the Korean War.

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

The NAACP heard him from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Truman came from a Missouri family of Confederate sympathizers, yet he told the rally the federal government must lead on civil rights.

Truman's 1948 whistle-stop rail car was named for which Portuguese-born explorer?

Ferdinand Magellan was an armor-plated Pullman rebuilt for Franklin Roosevelt in wartime, at about double its original weight. Truman turned its open rear platform into his 1948 campaign stage.

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

Chicago Daily Tribune editors had to go to press hours early because of a printers' strike. With the votes still uncounted, they trusted the polls that had Dewey winning easily.

Returning to Washington from Missouri, Truman posed with the 'Dewey Defeats Truman' front page during a train stop in which city?

St. Louis was only a stop on his ride east, two days after the vote. He had reason to beam: the paper's editorial page had called him a 'nincompoop'.

Which Southern governor ran for president against Truman in 1948 as the Dixiecrat candidate and carried four states?

Strom Thurmond, governor of South Carolina, became the candidate of Southern Democrats who bolted over the party's civil rights plank. He took 39 electoral votes, and Truman won anyway.

Who was Truman's running mate in 1948?

Alben Barkley, the Kentucky senator, got the slot only after Justice William O. Douglas turned it down. Accepting the nomination near two in the morning, Truman vowed they would win 'and make these Republicans like it'.

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

First shown on television, the ceremony reached far more people than the crowd at the Capitol. Truman also brought back the official inaugural ball, a custom that had been allowed to lapse.

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

The Fair Deal echoed Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, but Congress blocked most of it, including national health insurance. A higher minimum wage, wider Social Security and a 1949 housing act were among the few parts to pass.

Truman sent troops to Korea in 1950 without asking Congress to declare war, so what was the conflict officially called?

A police action was the official label, because Truman sent troops under the United Nations flag and never asked Congress for a declaration of war. The fighting went on for three years, until July 1953.

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

Wake Island is where MacArthur greeted his commander in chief with a handshake rather than a salute. He assured Truman there was very little chance China would enter the war; by late November a massive Chinese counter-attack was under way.

Fired by Truman in 1951, MacArthur told Congress that old soldiers never die but do what?

Fade away, he said, borrowing the line from an old barracks ballad. MacArthur came home to ticker-tape parades, while the telegrams and letters pouring into the White House ran heavily against Truman.

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

Blair House, the government guest house, was home while the White House was rebuilt. Truman was upstairs when the gunmen opened fire on the front steps, and he kept his scheduled appointments that afternoon.

What did Truman do with the death sentence of Oscar Collazo, his would-be assassin?

Commuted it to life in prison in 1952, sparing the man who came to kill him in 1950. Policeman Leslie Coffelt had died stopping the attack, shooting the other gunman dead after being mortally wounded himself.

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

Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer went against Truman by six votes to three. The mills went back to their owners, and the strike he had tried to prevent followed anyway and lasted 53 days.

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

His daughter Margaret had sung at Constitution Hall, and Hume wrote that she could not sing very well. Truman replied that if they ever met, Hume would need a new nose and plenty of beefsteak for black eyes.

Through 2025, which president came closest to Truman's record-low Gallup approval of 22 percent, bottoming out at 24?

Richard Nixon sank to 24 percent in the summer of 1974, days before he resigned, and still never reached Truman's 22 percent of 1952. George W. Bush came next, at 25 percent in 2008.

Estes Kefauver, who beat Truman in the 1952 New Hampshire primary, had won fame with televised Senate hearings into what?

Organized crime was the target, and some 30 million Americans watched the mobsters testify live in March 1951. The fame carried Kefauver past Truman in New Hampshire, and weeks later the president announced he would not run again.

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

I'm from Missouri was painted on the back of the sign, which was made at a federal reformatory in Oklahoma. The buck is said to come from poker: a marker, often a buckhorn-handled knife, passed to the player who had to deal next.

Which addition to the White House did Truman build in 1948 over the objections of the Commission of Fine Arts?

A balcony on the south portico cost $16,050.74, which Truman paid from household savings without asking Congress. Critics predicted it would cost him the 1948 election.

Which Republican, whom Truman had recruited for famine relief in 1946, attended the Truman Library's dedication in 1957?

Herbert Hoover and Truman were then the only living ex-presidents, and the two had become friends across party lines. Truman returned the favor in 1962 by attending the dedication of Hoover's own library.

Which program did Lyndon Johnson sign into law at the Truman Library in 1965?

Medicare was signed there because Truman had asked Congress for national health insurance twenty years earlier and been refused. Johnson handed Harry and Bess the program's first two cards.

Which government pension was the only one Truman drew on leaving office?

An Army pension of $112.56 a month was all he drew, and his talk of hardship helped win ex-presidents a pension in 1958. Yet his own 1953 draft will listed about $650,000 in land, bonds and cash.

What did Bess Truman refuse when Harry died?

A state funeral in Washington was the plan until Bess chose a simple service in the auditorium of his presidential library. He was buried in its courtyard, and she joined him there ten years later.

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.