Video: FDR signs law creating WACs (at 5:24)
(Friday, May 15, 1942. during World War II) — President Franklin D. Roosevelt today signed a measure creating the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, whose members came to be known as WACs.
Also today: wartime gasoline rationing went into effect in 17 Eastern states, limiting sales to three gallons a week for non-essential vehicles.
Video: Louisa Adams (at 0:31)
(Saturday, May 15, 1852) — Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, First Lady of the United States from 1825 to 1829 as the wife of President John Quincy Adams, died today of a heart attack. She was 77.
(Thursday, May 7, 1992) — Expressing “horror and dismay” at what he saw, U.S. President George H.W. Bush toured the broken and blackened districts of riot-ravaged South Central Los Angeles today and confronted the resentment of minority groups who feel cheated of justice and prosperity by the established power that he represents.
Video: Hoover's funeral, May 4, 1972 (at 1:05/43:41)
(Thursday, May 4, 1972) — FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was buried in Washington today, extolled by U.S. President Richard Nixon as a giant who stood head and shoulders above his countrymen.
Video: FDR at White House, April 28, 1932 (at 2:33)
(Thursday, April 28, 1932, 8:00 p.m. EDT) — 27 governors, including New York’s Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democratic candidate for president, sat down dinner tonight at the White House as guests of President and Mrs. Hoover, thus closing their 24th annual conference, which began Apr. 25 in Richmond.
(Saturday, April 15, 1972) — U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau signed a joint agreement today in Ottawa to begin the large-scale job of cleaning up the Great Lakes, the world’s largest reservoir of fresh water.
(Friday, April 14, 1972, 3 p.m. EST) — U.S. President Richard M. Nixon assured Canada today that the United States wants its northern neighbor to build a national economy free of American domination.
Going before the Canadian Parliament after agreeing in private talks with Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau to seek a resumption of stalled trade talks, Nixon also aimed oblique criticism at the Soviet Union for supply arms to North Vietnam.
(Thursday, April 13, 1972, 6:30 p.m. EST) — President Richard Nixon, arriving at storm-swept Uplands airport tonight, launched a 40-hour state visit to Ottawa by observing that the United States respects Canada’s separate identity and by suggesting that the two North American peoples must learn and live with their differences.
(Monday, April 13, 1992) — Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, 81, was jostled but not harmed today when an anti-nuclear protester walked onto a stage in Las Vegas where he was speaking and smashed an honorary crystal statue, hitting him with its shards.
(Wednesday, Apr. 11, 1962, 3:30 p.m. EST) — U.S. President John F. Kennedy bluntly denounced the major steel companies today for “a wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest” in raising their prices by $6 a ton. Continue reading Angry JFK rips steel leaders for price boost 50 years ago this hour (1962)
