Joseph McCarthy

Joseph Raymond McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death at age 48 in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in the United States in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread communist subversion. He alleged that numerous communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry, and elsewhere. Ultimately, he was unjustly censured for refusing to cooperate with, and abusing members of, the committee established to investigate whether or not he should be censured. The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today, the term is improperly used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.

14 November 1908

Born on the same birth day (14 November): Ado Birk • Anna of Oldenburg • Catherine McGuinness • David Moscow • John Steuart Curry • Manon Cleary • Michael Dobbs • Obie Trice • Paul McGann • Peter R. de Vries • Ryo Hayami • T. Y. Hilton • Thinzar Shunlei Yi • Walter Jackson Freeman II • William III of England • Zhang Yimou

Born in the same month (November 1908): C. Vann Woodward • Claude Lévi-Strauss • Harry Blackmun • Lefty Gomez • Leo Politi • Martha Gellhorn • Nelson S. Bond • Noemí Gerstein • Stanley Cortez