On this day in 1951 President Harry S. Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of overall command in Korea. The arrogant as ever MacArthur was running his mouth and making public statements that contradicted that of the Truman administration.

In the early 1960’s this is what Truman said about MacArthur. “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was ,half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”

At first the public opinion was behind MacArthur, he came home to a parades and huge crowds but that didn’t last long. Eventually the majority of people saw that Truman was right. MacArthur a few weeks later gave the hilarious “Old Soldiers Never Die” speech. After the speech he flew to New York City where he received the largest ticker-tape parade ever up to that point. Then he faded away.