On December 8, 1941, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress and asked for an official declaration of war against Japan. The previous day, Japan had launched a surprise attack against Pearl Harbor, a U.S. naval base in the Hawaiian Islands. Losses were devastating: six of eight battleships, three destroyers, and seven other ships were sunk or severely damaged, and more than half the island's aircraft were destroyed. A total of 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 were wounded. In launching the surprise offensive, Japanese military command hoped that, in addition to disabling the U.S. naval fleet, the attack would depress American morale and push the isolationist U.S. deeper into a strictly defensive role in World War II. However, Pearl Harbor had the opposite effect. Overnight, American society rallied behind President Roosevelt, who over the last two years had been progressively pushing for an active military alliance with Great...
On March 4, 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the thirty-second president of the United States. In his famous inaugural address, President...
On April 12, 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sitting for a portrait in Warm Springs, Georgia, when he complained ''I have a terrific headache'' and went up to his room to rest. A few...
Women served in clerical positions in the U.S. Army during World War I, but it was not until World War II that they were given full and regular status on par with male soldiers. In May 1941,...
With war declared in Washington and rumors of an impending Japanese attack on the American mainland running rife, a total blackout was declared in southern California on the night of December 8,...
On November 28, 1943, the first conference between the leaders of the three major Allied powers--U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader...
After failing to unseat Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election, Republican Wendell Wilkie became one of the president's most unlikely allies. Wilkie, a utility magnate and...
Prime Minister of England Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt meet for the 6th time in Quebec, Canada to discuss allied progress in the war. The two leaders also meet with other...
On January 20, 1937, in the first inauguration held in January instead of March, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn in to his second term. During his first four years, Roosevelt's...
Journalist Robert Trout coined the phrase ''fireside chat'' to describe President Franklin D. Roosevelt's frequent radio broadcasts, invoking an image of the president sitting by a fire in a living...
At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the Rising Sun of Japan on its wings appears out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A swarm of 360 Japanese warplanes...
