January 30 · This Day in America
In a clapboard house above the Hudson River, an only child is born — Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Nothing about the morning suggests it, but the boy in that room will be elected president four times, more than any American before or since. He will be struck down by polio at 39 and never walk unaided again, and he will lead the country anyway — through the worst economic collapse in its history and the largest war it has ever fought. His voice on the radio, calm and close, becomes the sound the country reaches for when it is afraid. "The only thing we have to fear," he will tell a desperate nation from the Capitol steps, "is fear itself." He will not live to see the war end; he dies with victory in sight. But the country he leaves behind — Social Security, the great dams, the idea that government owes its people a floor to stand on — is, in large part, the one we still live in. It begins here, in a quiet upstairs room.
Source: www.fdrlibrary.org
Also on this day · 1968
During a holiday truce, communist forces launch the largest offensive of the Vietnam War — coordinated strikes on cities, bases, and even the U.S. embassy in Saigon. Militarily the attackers are beaten back at fearful cost. But Americans had been told the war was nearly won, and now they were watching street fighting in the embassy compound on the evening news. The gap between the official story and the picture on the screen never fully closed again.
Source: history.state.gov
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.”Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, 1933