On July 18, 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who first took office
in 1933 as America’s 32nd president, was nominated for an unprecedented third term. Roosevelt, a Democrat, would
eventually be elected to a record four terms in office, the
only U.S. president to serve more than two terms.

Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower
(October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969)

Eight days after his inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
gave his first national radio address, or “fireside chat” (above), broadcast directly from the White House during the Great
Depression.  He began that address simply: “I want to talk for a
few minutes with the people of the United States about banking.”
He went on to explain his recent decision to close the nation’s
banks in order to stop a surge in mass withdrawals by panicked investor’s worried about possible bank failures. The banks would
be reopening the next day.

Roosevelt thanked the public for their “fortitude and good temper
during what he called the “banking holiday.”

In 1931 Herbert Hoover signed a bill into law officially adopting “The
Star Spangled Banner” as the national anthem of the United States 
of America.

Herbert Clark Hoover
(August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964)

Hoover served as the 31st president of the
United States from 1929 to 1933.

Hiram Rhodes Revels (September 27, 1827 – January 16, 1901)

On this day in 1870 Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from
Natchez, Mississippi, was sworn into the U.S. Senate, becoming
the first African American ever to sit in Congress.

During the Civil War, Revels, a college-educated minister, helped
form African American army regiments for the Union cause,
started a school for freed men, and served as a chaplain for the
Union army. Posted to Mississippi, Revels remained in the
former Confederate state after the war and entered into
Reconstruction-era Southern politics.

Hiram Revels taking the oath of office.