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Harry Truman's Life And Accomplishments

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Harry Truman was born in Lamar Missouri on May 8 1884 to Mattie and John Anderson Truman. Harry Truman's mother and father were unable to decide on his middle name: the two names considered where first name of Mattie's father, Solomon, and the first name of John's father, Shipp. Following a practice not uncommon among those of Scotch-Irish ancestry, Mattie and John Truman gave their son the one letter middle name of "S". Harry's early years were spent on Mattie's father's farm, and "Grandpa Young" adored the boy. No doubt Grandpa Young's fondness of the child contributed to the contentment he enjoyed during his boyhood, the carefree circumstances that led Truman in his later years to become fond of saying he had the happiest childhood imaginable. …show more content…

He nevertheless chose to enlist to serve in World War I by rejoining the Guard. This time he faced the regular army physical for the first time and he passed in spite of his poor eyesight (20/400 in his left eye, medically considered "blind") by memorizing the eye chart. He resumed artillery training and his regiment was absorbed by the national military, Harry serving in Detachment 35th Division, 129th Field Artillery. Aboard the George Washington he arrived in the harbor of Brest on April 13th as a First Lieutenant in the American Expeditionary Forces. By the end of the month he was training in an elite artillery school learning surveying and astronomy at a level requiring college level mathematics (a challenge for Harry who had not attended college), and mastering a sophisticated, French-designed and French military-secret guarded, rapid-fire 75 millimeter artillery gun. Engineered with a hydropneumatic carriage recoil system, the gun remained stationary following each discharge, and so required no aim correction between shots. This allowed it to fire twenty to thirty rounds a minute with an effective range of five miles, making it "ideal" for trench warfare, and the output of a battery of four was "murderous". The magnitude of toil and ingenuity sunk into the effort to create such a …show more content…

Jimmy's father was James Pendergast, known as Alderman Jim, the founder of the Pendergast dynasty and overlord in Kansas City's political machine. Harry accepted the Pendergast's offer to run for eastern judge in Jackson County, a courthouse job in Independence. Despite the title, the position was administrative rather than judicial and held some control over the disposition of municipal funds. Truman won the 1922 election, but lost in his 1924 re-election bid. The county courthouse was home to three "judgeships": the eastern judge, the position Truman held from 1922-24, the wester judge, and the presiding judge. In 1926 Truman ran for presiding judge, again as part of the Pendergast machine, and Truman served two four-year terms and at the end of the second of these, in 1934, he for the US Senate as the state's Democratic contender, and he unseated the Republican incumbent. He faced Republican challenge in the 1940 primary, but he prevailed and held his seat. In 1944 Truman was elected vice-president when his running mate FDR won the presidency. FDR died on April 12, 1945, 82 days into Truman's vice-presidential term. Truman took the oath of office two hours and twenty-four minutes after FDR's

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