This Day in History
On March 4, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt took office as America’s 32nd president.
On this date:
In 1791, Vermont became the 14th state.
In 1793, George Washington was sworn in for a second term as president of the United States during a ceremony in Philadelphia.
In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated for a second term of office; with the end of the Civil War in sight, Lincoln declared: “With malice toward none, with charity for all.”
In 1913, the “Buffalo nickel” officially went into circulation.
In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge’s inauguration was broadcast live on 21 radio stations coast-to-coast.
In 1952, Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis were married in San Fernando Valley, California.
In 1974, the first issue of People magazine, then called People Weekly, was published by Time-Life Inc.; on the cover was actress Mia Farrow.
In 1977, some 1,500 people were killed in an earthquake that shook southern and eastern Europe.
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation on the Iran-Contra affair, acknowledging that his overtures to Iran had “deteriorated” into an arms-for-hostages deal.
In 1994, in New York, four extremists were convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people and injured more than a thousand. Actor-comedian John Candy died in Durango, Mexico, at age 43.
In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sexual harassment at work can be illegal even when the offender and victim are of the same gender.
In 2005, Martha Stewart, imprisoned for five months for her role in a stock scandal, left federal prison to start five months of home confinement.
Ten years ago: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, addressing a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, called on Americans to look beyond their own tumbling financial markets to see a world gripped by an “economic hurricane” that could be turned around with U.S. help. Playwright Horton Foote, who’d won an Oscar for his screen adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” died in Hartford, Conn. at age 92.