On October 5, 1947, President Harry S Truman (1884-1972)
made the first-ever televised presidential address from the
White House, asking Americans to cut back on their use of
grain in order to help starving Europeans.

At the time of Truman’s food-conservation speech, Europe
was still recovering from World War II and suffering from
famine.

America’s first president George Washington addressed the
assembled Congress with the first State of the Union on this
day in history, Jan. 8, 1780.

Washington’s address took place at Federal Hall in New York
City — and addressed a variety of topics including national
defense, foreign policy, economics and education.

Federal Hall in New York City.

On October 5, 1947, President Harry Truman (left/above) made the
first-ever televised presidential address from the White House,
asking Americans to cut back on their use of grain in order to
help starving Europeans.

At the time of Truman’s food-conservation speech, Europe was
still recovering from World War II and suffering from famine.

Truman, the 33rd commander in chief, worried that if the U.S. didn’t provide food aid, his administration’s Marshall Plan for European economic recovery would fall apart.

He asked farmers and distillers to reduce grain use and requested
that the public voluntarily forgo meat on Tuesdays, eggs and
poultry on Thursdays and save a slice of bread each day.

On January 4, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered the
first televised evening State of the Union Address.

Johnson laid out for Congress a laundry list of legislation needed
to achieve his plan for a Great Society.

As a result Congress enacted sweeping legislation in the areas of
civil rights, health care, education and the environment. 

The 1965 State of the Union address heralded the creation of Medicare/Medicaid, Head Start, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil
Rights Act, the Department of Housing and Urban Development
and the White House Conference on Natural Beauty.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson signs the Voting Rights
Act of 1965.

On November 19, 1863, at the dedication of a military cemetery
at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the American Civil War,
President Abraham Lincoln delivered one of the most memorable speeches in American history. In fewer than 275 words, Lincoln
brilliantly and movingly reminded a war-weary public why the
Union had to fight, and win, the Civil War. Lincoln’s address
lasted just two or three minutes.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We
are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate
a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here
gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting
and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—
we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what
we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us
the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which
they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather
for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that
cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that
we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and
that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall
not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln

November 19, 1863.