On this day in 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who first took office in 1933 as America’s 32nd president, is nominated for an unprecedented third term. Roosevelt, a Democrat, would eventually be elected to a record four terms in office, the only U.S. president to serve more than two terms.
Roosevelt was born January 30, 1882, in Hyde Park, New York, and went on to serve as a New York state senator from 1911 to 1913, assistant secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920 and governor of New York from 1929 to 1932. In 1932, he defeated incumbent Herbert Hoover to be elected president for the first time. During his first term, Roosevelt enacted his New Deal social programs, which were aimed at lifting America out of the Great Depression. In 1936, he won his second term in office by defeating Kansas governor Alf Landon in a landslide.
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n 1944, with the war still in progress, Roosevelt defeated New York governor Thomas Dewey for a fourth term in office. However, the president was unable to complete the full term. On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt, who had suffered from various health problems for years, died at age 63 in Warm Springs, Georgia. He was succeeded by Vice President Harry S. Truman. On March 21, 1947, Congress passed the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which stated that no person could be elected to the office of president more than twice. The amendment was ratified by the required number of states in 1951
The Dime is a commemoration to FDR and all victims of Polio. The “March of Dimes” was started in 1937 by entertainer Eddie Cantor to keep the facilities for Polio victims at Warm Springs, running. Despite FDR’s generous donation the spa was running very short of funds, Cantor asked everyone to send a small dime to the White House to keep the spa open. The White House was overwhelmed with letters containing a dime. On January 30 in 1946, the first Roosevelt dimes were issued by the US mint and they have been issued ever since.
390 BC – Roman-Gaulish Wars: Battle of the Allia – a Roman army is defeated by raiding Gauls, leading to the subsequent sacking of Rome.
64 – Great fire of Rome: a fire begins to burn in the merchant area of Rome and soon burns completely out of control.
1290 – King Edward I of England issues the Edict of Expulsion, banishing all Jews (numbering about 16,000) from England; this was Tisha B’Av on the Hebrew calendar, a day that commemorates many Jewish calamities.
1334 – The bishop of Florence blesses the first foundation stone for the new campanile (bell tower) of the Florence Cathedral, designed by the artist Giotto di Bondone.
1389 – Kingdom of France and Kingdom of England agree to the Truce of Leulinghem, in inaugurating a 13 year peace; the longest period of sustained peace during the Hundred Years War
1862 – First ascent of Dent Blanche, one of the highest summits in the Alps.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Fort Wagner/Morris Island – the first formal African American military unit, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, fails in their assault on Confederate-held Battery Wagner.
1870 – The First Vatican Council decrees the dogma of papal infallibility.
1914 – The U.S. Congress forms the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps, giving definite status to aircraft within the U.S. Army for the first time.
1925 – Adolf Hitler publishes his personal manifesto Mein Kampf.
1936 – In Spanish Morocco, military rebels attempt a coup d’état against the legitimacy of the Spanish government. This will lead to the Spanish Civil War.
1942 – World War II: the Germans test fly the Messerschmitt Me-262 using only its jet engines for the first time.
1944 – World War II: Hideki Tojo resigns as Prime Minister of Japan due to numerous setbacks in the war effort.
1965 – Russian satellite Zond 3 launched.
1966 – Gemini 10 launched
1968 – The Intel Corporation is founded in Santa Clara, California
1969 – After a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts drives an Oldsmobile off a bridge and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, dies.
1976 – Nadia Comaneci became the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics at the 1976 Summer Olympics.
1984 – Beverly Lynn Burns becomes first female Boeing 747 airline captain.
1994 – The bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (Argentinian Jewish Communal Center) in Buenos Aires kills 85 people (mostly Jewish) and injures 300.
1995 – On the Caribbean island of Montserrat, the Soufriere Hills volcano erupts. Over the course of several years, it devastates the island, destroying the capital and forcing most of the population to flee.
1996 – Storms provoke severe flooding on the Saguenay River, beginning one of Quebec’s costliest natural disasters ever.
2005 – Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement, first public joint statement by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the then U.S. President George W. Bush.
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