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The Nation 1950
 On June 26, 1950 President Harry Truman responded to the North Korean invasion of South Korea with the use of the US Air force and Navy. Before the Korean War ended 4 years later on July 27th 1953. More than 40,000 American soldiers never made it home. Truman enters Korean War
 Alger Hiss was found guilty of espionage on testimony from his accomplice Whittaker Chambers who avoided conviction as a witness for the government. Hiss served 4 years. The case is notable for it helped launch the careers of Richard Nixon whose work on the case for
House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) moved him from the House to the Senate. It also was the catalyst for the rise of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare. The Alger Hiss Story
 Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy and his advisor Roy Cohn began what becomes known as McCarthyism. After the Alger Hiss case they charge that the State Department was infested with 205 communists which President Truman hotly denied. McCarthyism Begins
Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo fail to assassinate President Truman at Blair House. A shootout with police left Collazo and officer Leslie W. Coffelt no longer among the living. President Truman commuted Torresola's pending execution to life and was later pardoned by President Carter in 1979. The Blair House shoot out
FBI began its infamous "10 Most Wanted Fugitives" list. It is first published in newspapers before delegated to post office walls. FBI most wanted list
Nobel prizes 1950
Physics – Cecil Frank Powell
Chemistry – Otto Paul Hermann Diels, Kurt Alder
Medicine – Edward Calvin Kendall, Tadeus Reichstein, Philip Showalter Hench
Literature – Earl (Bertrand Arthur William) Russell
Peace – Ralph Bunche
The Class of 1950
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"The man of 1950 was not a statesman; Dean Acheson and his fellow diplomats of the free world had, in 1950, notably failed to stop the march of Communism. Nor was 1950's man a general; the best commander of the year, MacArthur, had blundered and been beaten. Nor a scientist, for science—so sure at the century's beginning that it had all the answers—now waited for the politicians (or anyone else) to find a way of controlling the terrible power that science had released. Nor an industrialist, for 1950, although it produced more goods than any other year in the world's history, was not preoccupied with goods, but with life & death. Nor a scholar, for the world of 1950 was surfeited with undigested facts, and sought its salvation not in the conquest of new knowledge but in what it could relearn from old old, old lessons. 1950's man might turn out to be the aging conspirator, Joseph Stalin but as the year closed, that dreadful prospect was far from certain; if he was winning the game and not just an inning, Stalin's historians would record that 1950—and all other years from the death of Lenin—belonged to him. Or 1950's man might turn out to be an unknown saint, quietly living above the clash of armies and ideas. Him, too, the future would have to find." Time Man of the year
The World 1950
The 1945 Japanese surrender caused Korea to be partitioned along the 38th parallel. In 1950 the Communist North invaded the South. President Harry Truman and the United Nations responded. For four bloody years the fight moved up an down the Korean peninsula killing 2 million people and displacing millions more. The Korean War Site
The Korean War I
 With the Japanese surrender in 1945 Kuomintang forces under Chiang Kai-shek resumed the fight with the Communists led by Mao Zedong that had been going on since the early 1930s. In October 1949 the Communists finally won and Chiang left the mainland to set up a free China in what was then called Formosa (Taiwan). Beijing became the new capital of the People's Republic of China and Zhou Enlai elected premier.
Though Britain recognized the new nation, the United Nations with heavy American influence refused to acknowledge mainland China until the 1970s.
In January of 1950 China signed a treaty with the communist Soviet Union and by June had entered in armed conflict with the United States and United Nations in the Korean War. Peoples Republic of China
 After decades of conflict and the charismatic favor of Mahatma Gandhi, India gained independence from Britain in 1947. With the partition of the new Muslim nation of Pakistan. In 1950 India adopted a constitution and became a Republic under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru who was the first and longest serving prime minister of India from 1947 until 1964. Republic of India
 Though the "Joe One" pictured here was detonated in August of 1949, it was not until 1950 that Marshall Voroshilov of U.S.S.R. announced they had developed the atomic bomb. At the same time in the United States Albert Einstein warned against the new and better hydrogen version. Russian joins the club
The present and fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, fled Tibet when Communist China invaded. Little has changed in 60 years. Dalai Lama letter of 1950
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