Grand Chute (French: great fall or "large rapids") is a town in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 23,831 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Appleton metropolitan area. The unincorporated community of Apple Creek is partially located in the town.
The Fox Cities are a group of communities located along the Fox River in east-central Wisconsin. The region centers around the city of Appleton and includes other core municipalities such as Neenah, Menasha, Kaukauna, Grand Chute, and Fox Crossing. These cities are situated in Outagamie, Winnebago, and Calumet counties and have historically developed due to their proximity to the river, which played a significant role in transportation and industrial growth, particularly in paper manufacturing.
Major points of interest include the Fox Cities Exhibition Center, Community First Champion Center, Fox Cities Performing Arts Center, High Cliff State Park, and Neuroscience Group Field at Fox Cities Stadium. The Fox River Mall is the largest shopping mall in the state at 1.2 million square feet. Area post-secondary schools include Fox Valley Technical College and Lawrence University. Television and radio stations in the area, usually originating out of Green Bay, identify as serving "Green Bay/Fox Cities" to acknowledge both major population centers in the region (for stations licensed to Green Bay, that community must be mentioned first).
Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. senator from Wisconsin from 1947 until his death 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 censured by the Senate in 1954 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 used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.
Born in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, McCarthy commissioned into the Marine Corps in 1942, where he served as an intelligence briefing officer for a dive bomber squadron. Following the end of World War II, he attained the rank of major. He volunteered to fly twelve combat missions as a gunner-observer. These missions were generally safe, and after one where he was allowed to shoot as much ammunition as he wanted, mainly at coconut trees, he acquired the nickname "Tail-Gunner Joe". Some of his claims of heroism were later shown to be exaggerated or falsified, leading many of his critics to use "Tail-Gunner Joe" as a term of mockery.