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Events on Thursday 9 February 1950 1
1950Joseph McCarthy's Wheeling speechSenator alleges communist infiltration of the State DepartmentIn a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed to hold a list of communists working in the US State Department. The unsubstantiated claim launched a wave of anti-communist investigations that came to be known as McCarthyism. It intensified Cold War political tensions within the United States for years afterward.