#franklin d. roosevelt

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

so in an attempt to actually use positive thinking, anytime i fuck up and my brain reacts as if ive cause a minor apocalyptic event, i compare my fuck up to the 4 minute fuck up committed by the crew of the uss william d porter.

and only today, as i was having to explain what happened to my mom when i was explaining the whole comparison thing, did i realise that most people dont know about it and ive decided that needs to change because its objectively hilarious.

...which is a weird thing to say about an event that occured on a warship in 1943, specifically november 14th.

see the uss william d porter was a fletcher-class destroyer but you dont need to know what that means, just that she had guns that went bang bang and that she was escorting another ship, the uss iowa, to cairo.

while they were on their way there, they performed some gun trials like testing the anti-aircraft guns or the torpedos. and while they were running a torpedo drill, the crew of the porter managed to fire a live torpedo straight at the iowa which you know, in terms of a list of things to do while escorting a ship, shooting a torpedo at them is not on that list.

especially if the president of the united states is on board.

yeah so fdr was on board and the gun trials were actually his idea, and part of the trials was that they were conducted under radio silence.

and that means the crew of the porter couldnt just call the iowa to be like "move out the way, we accidentally shot a torpedo at you."

but they did have signal lamps and you know, the signalman on board was trained to signal this exact kind of message.

...and uh never mind, the signalman did manage to successfully tell the iowa that a torpedo was coming toward them but wasnt as successful when it came to the direction the torpedo was coming from.

not all hope is lost though because the signalman could still use the signal lamp to correct his previous mistake and-, never mind, he announced that the porter was reversing, which she wasnt.

yeah so at catastrophic mistake number 3, they broke radio silence to warn the iowa and she managed to turn out of the way just in time which meant no one got hurt. and even though the inquiry into the incident led to chief torpedoman (fantastic job title btw) lawton dawson being sentences to hard labour, fdr intervened and waved away his sentence, saying it was all an accident.

but yeah, so thats my new measure for "how much did i really fuck up?" and when i compared accidentally picking up a pencil case without a tag on it in wilko, turns out it was a very minor fuck-up. yes, the cashier had to ask another worker to grab a duplicate so they could scan the barcode, but i didnt nearly kill the president during wartime via accidental friendly fire

[reality-detective]

[perfectfeelings]

There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

[kchasm]

Ryu Number: Keanu Reeves

[iceman-kazansky]

On December 7th, 1941, 83 years ago today, the Empire of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, a US Naval Harbour situated on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. The result of this strike was the US officially joining the ongoing world war raging in Europe.

The attack claimed the lives of 2,403 U.S. personnel, including 68 civilians and destroyed and damaged 19 U.S. Navy ships, including 8 battleships.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

These folks look suitably grim as they listen to the election returns at the temporary "wigwam" in the 7th Avenue Armory on November 6, 1928. Governor Alfred E. Smith, the Democratic candidate for president, is seated in the second row, third from the left. He lost to Herbert Hoover by 17 percentage points. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the (successful) candidate to succeed Smith as New York governor, is in the first row, third from the left.

Photo: Associated Press

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

US Government propaganda poster (1943)

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“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.” ― Franklin D. Roosevelt

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“Once more, let me remind you what fascism is. Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.” — Tommy Douglas

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In fascism, feeling is first. Fascists of the 1920s and 1930s wanted to undo the enlightenment and appeal to people as members of a tribe, race or species. What mattered was a story of us and them that could begin a politics of conflict and combat. Fascists proposed that the world was run by conspirators whose mysterious hold must be broken by violence. This could be achieved by a leader (führer, duce) who spoke directly to and for the people, without laws and institutions. Totalitarianism meant domination of the whole self, without respect for private and public. -Timothy Snyder 

[thoughtkick]

There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

[fdrlibrary]

Happy New Year!

Your tux is sharp. The food is on point. The conversation is flowing. But you're still not making it to midnight.

📷: Official dinner given for President Roosevelt and members of his party on their visit to Monterrey, Mexico, 4/20/1943, NPx 48-22:628

[florals-cardigan]

More slides

Part 1

[deadpresidents]

Vice President Harry S. Truman playing the piano as 20-year-old actress Lauren Bacall looks on at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on February 10, 1945. Later in life, Truman would tell a biographer that: "My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician -- and, to tell the truth, there's hardly a difference."

At roughly the exact same time, approximately 5,259 miles away from Washington, D.C., the big three Allied leaders of World War II -- British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt (whose health was rapidly failing) -- were wrapping up their monumental summit at the Yalta Conference in Crimea to discuss plans for the post-war division and occupation of a defeated Nazi Germany.

Two months later, on April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt was dead and Truman succeeded to the Presidency after his brief Vice Presidency. Before April was over, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler were also dead, the United Nations had been officially established, Allied troops began finding and liberating concentration camps, and the war in Europe ended with the unconditional surrender of Germany in early May. All of these remarkable historic events occurred within a matter of weeks, and sometimes just a few days or even a few hours apart.

[uwmspeccoll]

FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND EXPRESSION

FREEDOM OF WORSHIP

FREEDOM FROM WANT

FREEDOM FROM FEAR

Milestone Monday

We remember January 6 as the date for the congressional certification of the presidential election and the peaceful transfer of power in the United States, but it is also infamously remembered for the violent storming of the Capitol Building in 2021 to prevent that certification. It is also the date in 1941 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his Four Freedoms speech in the State of the Union address, which would later inspire the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. The "essential human freedoms" articulated in Roosevelt's address are:

Freedom of speech and expression

Freedom of worship

Freedom from want

Freedom from fear

To commemorate the address, we present images from the propagandistic FDR, The New Lincoln: Foursquare for the Four Freedoms, published in New York by Picture Digest in 1942, and the famous 1943 paintings by Norman Rockwell that were inspired by the Four Freedoms, as reproduced in Norman Rockwell, Artist and Illustrator by Brooklyn Museum director Thomas S. Buechner, published in New York by H. N. Abrams in 1970. These paintings are considered as equally propagandistic, as they were intended to promote patriotism in a time of war.

While the Four Freedom seem like idealistic aspirations, the address was really a national security speech, breaking with the non-interventionist mood of the day. The Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor eleven months later, and the Four Freedoms would be referenced as justification for the U.S. engagement in WWII against the tide of aggression and totalitarianism.

View more Milestone Monday posts

[stay-close]

There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

[angelkeitai]

YOU. ARE. JOKING. THERES NO WAY. THERES NO WAYYYYYY

[god-breast-america]

Update im a genius

[newyorkthegoldenage]

The George Washington Bridge is formally dedicated by Gov. Morgan F. Larson of New Jersey, left, and Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York, right, as they cut the ribbon stretched across the bridge on the New York side, October 24, 1931. The world's longest suspension bridge (at the time) was built at a cost of $60,000,000 and linked Manhattan and New Jersey.

Photo: AP via the NY Daily News