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Truman hands the railroads to the Army to stop a strike from stalling the Korean War buildup

Secretary of the Army Frank Pace gets the order to take control of the lines before a walkout can start.

Five weeks after American troops entered the fighting in Korea, a nationwide rail strike threatened to choke off the flow of troops and supplies just as the war effort was ramping up. In August 1950, President Truman ordered Secretary of the Army Frank Pace to seize control of the nation's railroads and keep them running under federal operation. The takeover kept trains moving through the crisis, with the Army rather than union leadership or the rail companies now running the lines…

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More from August 25
1944

Paris is free; von Choltitz signs away the city he was ordered to burn

Hours later de Gaulle stands at the Hôtel de Ville and tells Paris it liberated itself.
2012

Voyager 1 leaves the Sun's bubble; no craft has gone farther

Thirty-five years after launch, its instruments detect the plasma signature of true interstellar space.
1814

A second day of fire in Washington: the Library of Congress and Treasury burn

A well-timed thunderstorm, not American resistance, would end the occupation by morning.
19161776 Club
The Organic Act puts Yellowstone, Yosemite, and dozens of other holdings under one roof for the first time.
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Read the full August 25 edition →Everything that happened on August 25 →
More from Cold War America
1962

A U-2 camera finds Soviet missiles ninety miles from Florida

The film still has to be developed and read before Washington even knows what it has.
1954

Hazel comes ashore in the Carolinas; by nightfall it is drowning Toronto

A Category 4 landfall near Calabash and a flash flood on the Humber River happen hundreds of miles apart, on the same day.
1989

A 6.9 quake hits the Bay Area as the World Series is about to start on live national TV

Light rush-hour traffic, cleared early for the game, kept the Nimitz Freeway collapse from killing far more.
1948

Truman stands on Union Square to honor three presidents North Carolina gave the nation

A sitting president stood before bronze and granite to mark where Jackson, Johnson and Polk were born.
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