Check out this amazing old photo of FDR's inauguration and then compare it to this one of Eisenhower and this of Obama. Aerial view of U.S. Capitol and crowd on the grounds of...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrVZblIYljo This is some great old footage of FDR dedicating the NIH back in 1940. Thanks to GoDCer Jeff for sending this in a while ago. It was originally posted on an NIH blog, Circulating Now, and...
Other Cool Stuff / 03.03.2014
Ex-Slave Visits With FDR at White House
Watching the Oscars and thinking of "12 Years a Slave," we were wondering if and when a former slave visited the White House as a guest. I also suspect that...
Source: Library of Congress The "Grande Dame of Washington" has seen so much history that it's difficult to do a post listing just three bit of trivia. Nevertheless, the building that...
Wow, this one is cool. We dug it up on the National Archives' site. This is a letter from a young Fidel Castro, at the age of 14, who was a student at Colegio de Dolores school...
Faces & Places of Yesterday, Guest Posts / 04.10.2012
Franklin Roosevelt: No Marrying Foreign Aliens
For this last post, let us turn to the December 2, 1936 copy of the Washington Post. In this article, we observe a great tongue-in-cheek opening line (a nod to various failed multilateral trade initiatives, notably...
That's a pretty good attention grabbing headline from the Washington Post. And I think this is appropriate, given the current media focus on the White House's home brewed beer....
Historical Events / 26.04.2012
The Morning of Pearl Harbor
In Washington, late into the evening of December 6th, reporters worked their normal, likely frantic, hours and submitted their articles in time to be published the following morning. War had been...
Historical Events, Notable People & Places / 20.04.2012
We Want Beer! The 1937 All-Star Game at Griffith Stadium
This ...
Historical Events, Notable People & Places / 24.01.2012
FDR’s 1941 State of the Union: Four Freedoms Speech
Later this evening, the President will give his annual State of the Union address. On such an important day, it would be remiss of me not to share one of the greatest State of the Union speeches of all time ... the one given, twelve presidents ago, by Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 6th, 1941. If you want the full text of the speech, go here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrwv4cW53dk
Historical Events, Notable People & Places / 07.01.2012
President Franklin Roosevelt’s Fourth Inauguration (1945)
Here is video (partly in color) of FDR being inaugurated for the fourth time. This being the fourth time is impressive enough, but also, this happened on the South Portico of the White House due to ongoing privations due to the Second World War. It was a rather muted event compared to all other inaugurations. That doesn't mean this video isn't incredible.
Watch as Franklin Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United states starts his fourth term (which only lasts three months). He died in April of the same year and his funeral procession is something you can watch here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzYoZFclxoc
Historical Events, Notable People & Places / 07.01.2012
1945 Film Footage of President Roosevelt’s Funeral
April 12th, 1945 was a sad day for our nation. Our president, who had led us through the depths of the Depression and was a force for good during World War II, died at 3:35 pm. He had just been inaugurated for a record fourth term and was guiding our country through the closing months of the greatest war the planet had ever seen.
This is a somber video of his funeral procession through the nation's capital. The only other recent presidents to have a funeral on this scale were Kennedy and Reagan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B6J_z152cQ