McCarthyism & Red Scare Trivia
Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Harry Truman served only 82 days as vice president before Franklin Delano Roosevelt's unexpected death elevated him to the presidency.
Harry Truman was the last American president to have no education beyond high school.
The "S" in Harry S. Truman stood for nothing; Truman had no middle name. His parents were not able to agree on a middle name when he was born, so they settled simply on "S."
In the early 1950s, Ronald Reagan—then a popular B-movie actor and head of the Hollywood actors' union, the Screen Actors Guild—volunteered to serve the FBI as a secret informant on communists in the entertainment industry. Reagan appears in FBI reports under his codename: T-10.19
Every one of the Hollywood Ten was, in fact, either a current or former member of the Communist Party.20
Blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, continued to write screenplays under other writers' names. One of his films, 1953's Roman Holiday, won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.21
The House Un-American Activities Committee did not disband until 1975.22