March 12 · This Day in America
The banks are closed. Nearly five thousand have failed; savings have vanished; people stand in the cold not trusting the vaults that hold their money. Eight days into his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt sits down before a microphone and talks to the country as if it were one person in the next room. He explains, plainly, how a bank works and why theirs will be safe when it reopens. No oratory. Just calm, and arithmetic, and the steadying sound of a voice that seems to know what it is doing. It is the first Fireside Chat. The next morning, the banks open — and Americans line up not to pull money out, but to put it back. Confidence, it turns out, can be spoken back into existence. A democracy had just learned it could be talked through its fear.
Source: millercenter.org
Also on this day · 1912
Half-deaf and recently widowed, Juliette Gordon Low telephones a cousin with a now-famous line: "I've got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America, and all the world, and we're going to start it tonight." Eighteen girls register that day. They learn knots, first aid, and the radical idea that they should be brave and self-reliant. It becomes the Girl Scouts — millions strong, still going.
Source: www.womenshistory.org