ROSS SIMPSON

On September 3, 1939, in response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland,
Britain and France, both allies of the overrun nation declare war
on Germany.

The first casualty of that declaration was not German—but the
British ocean liner Athenia, which was sunk by a German U-30
submarine that had assumed the liner was armed and belligerent.

There were more than 1,100 passengers on board, 112 of whom
lost their lives. Of those, 28 were Americans, but President
Roosevelt was unfazed by the tragedy, declaring that no one
was to “thoughtlessly or falsely talk of America sending its
armies to European fields.” The United States would remain
neutral.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945)

British ocean liner SS Athenia was sunk when a torpedo
from the German submarine U-30 sank her in the Western Approaches.

The modern United States received its crowning star when
President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a proclamation
admitting (Native spelling: Hawai‘i) into the Union as the
50th state on this day in 1959.

On August 19, 1934, Adolf Hitler, already chancellor, is
also elected president of Germany in an unprecedented
consolidation of power in the short history of the republic. 

On August 17, 1998, President Bill Clinton became the first
sitting president to testify before the Office of Independent
Counsel as the subject of a grand-jury investigation.

The testimony came after a four-year investigation into
Clinton and his wife Hillary’s alleged involvement in
several scandals, including accusations of sexual
harassment, potentially illegal real-estate deals and
suspected “cronyism” involved in the firing of White
House travel-agency personnel.