Wednesday · November 11, 2026
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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
1959

Eisenhower signs over the Army's rocket men; von Braun now works for NASA

The order strips most of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and hands its hardware and people to the year-old civilian space agency.
1959

Wright's spiral museum opens its doors on Fifth Avenue

The architect died in April; the building he fought sixteen years to see built opened without him in October.
1962

Kennedy goes on television: Soviet missiles sit in Cuba, and the Navy will stop every ship

The president calls it a quarantine, not a blockade, so Moscow cannot call it an act of war.
1946

A camera rides a captured Nazi rocket 65 miles up and photographs the curve of the Earth

The rocket smashed into the New Mexico desert, but the film survived.
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