“I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.” – Harry S. Truman
1. Harry S. Truman became the 33rd president of the United States on 12th April 1945 on the wake of President Roosevelt’s death, three months after the former was sworn in as the Vice President under Roosevelt. He was president from 1945 to 1953.
2. It was during Harry Truman’s presidency that nuclear bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, one presidential decision the world will never forget. He has served in the army during the World War I in France and a month after his retirement he got married to Elizabeth “Bess” Wallace in June 1919.
3. Truman initiated the Marshall Plan, which gave billions in financial aid to countries in war torn Europe, a plan which he hoped would put a check on the spread of communism and revive their economy.
4. Truman’s averseness to communism paved way for US intervention in the Korean war of 1950, rushing troops to the aid of Republic of Korea, to avoid conquest of an independent nation by a communist regime which in turn affected Truman’s popularity in the United States.
5. Truman was responsible for the creation of the CIA and in an interview twenty years later Truman’s comments on how he felt about the CIA reflected his character and it went “I think it was a mistake. And if I’d know what was going to happen, I never would have done it”.
6. Harry Truman often known as the last common man president and the last of the presidents to have not gone to college died at the age of 88 in 1972 and was buried in the courtyard of his presidential library in Independence, Missouri.
7. Harry Truman was a bibliophile and passionate about music. He played the piano and is known to have read every book in the Independence Public Library.
