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Date: March 2, 1867

Location: Washington, D.C.

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The primary source documents on this page highlight pivotal moments in the course of American history or government. They are some of the most-viewed and sought-out documents in the holdings of the National Archives.

Revolution and the New Nation

Expansion and Reform

Civil War and Reconstruction

The Development of the Industrial United States

The Emergence of Modern America

The Great Depression and World War II

Postwar United States

A note about the documents included on this page: These documents were originally selected for the project Our Documents: 100 Milestone Documents from the National Archives, a national initiative on American history, civics, and service. They were identified to "help us think, talk and teach about the rights and responsibilities of citizens in our democracy...These documents reflect our diversity and our unity, our past and our future, and mostly our commitment as a nation to continue to strive to 'form a more perfect union.'" The original list included only documents created prior to 1965. In the future, this page will be updated with additional documents created after 1965. The original list also included several documents from the Library of Congress (Federalist Paper No. 10, Federalist Paper No. 51, Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address) and the New York Public Library (George Washington's Farewell Address)."

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The primary source documents on this page highlight pivotal moments in the course of American history or government. They are some of the most-viewed and sought-out documents in the holdings of the National Archives.

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Date: July 9, 1868

Location: United States

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Passed by Congress June 13, 1866, and ratified July 9, 1868, the 14th Amendment extended liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights to formerly enslaved people.

Following the Civil War, Congress submitted to the states three amendments as part of its Reconstruction program to guarantee equal civil and legal rights to Black citizens. A major provision of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship to "All persons born or naturalized in the United States," thereby granting citizenship to formerly enslaved people.

Another equally important provision was the statement that "nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The right to due process of law and equal protection of the law now applied to both the federal and state governments.

On June 16, 1866, the House Joint Resolution proposing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was submitted to the states. On July 28, 1868, the 14th amendment was declared, in a certificate of the Secretary of State, ratified by the necessary 28 of the 37 States, and became part of the supreme law of the land.

Congressman John A. Bingham of Ohio, the primary author of the first section of the 14th Amendment, intended that the amendment also nationalize the Bill of Rights by making it binding upon the states. When introducing the amendment, Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan specifically stated that the privileges and immunities clause would extend to the states "the personal rights guaranteed and secured by the first eight amendments." Historians disagree on how widely Bingham's and Howard's views were shared at the time in the Congress, or across the country in general. No one in Congress explicitly contradicted their view of the amendment, but only a few members said anything at all about its meaning on this issue. For many years, the Supreme Court ruled that the amendment did not extend the Bill of Rights to the states.

Not only did the 14th Amendment fail to extend the Bill of Rights to the states; it also failed to protect the rights of Black citizens. A legacy of Reconstruction was the determined struggle of Black and White citizens to make the promise of the 14th Amendment a reality. Citizens petitioned and initiated court cases, Congress enacted legislation, and the executive branch attempted to enforce measures that would guard all citizens' rights. While these citizens did not succeed in empowering the 14th Amendment during Reconstruction, they effectively articulated arguments and offered dissenting opinions that would be the basis for change in the 20th century.

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14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868)

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Passed by Congress June 13, 1866, and ratified July 9, 1868, the 14th Amendment extended liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights to formerly enslaved people. Following the Civil War, Congress submitted to the states three amendments as part of its Reconstruction program to guarantee equal civil and legal rights to Black citizens.

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Date: May 10, 1869

Location: Promontory Summit, Utah

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On May 10, 1869, the presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah, and drive a ceremonial last spike into a rail line that connects their railroads. This made transcontinental railroad travel possible for the first time in U.S. history. No longer would western-bound travelers need to take the long and dangerous journey by wagon train.
READ MORE: 10 Ways the Transcontinental Railroad Changed America
Since at least 1832, both Eastern and frontier statesmen realized a need to connect the two coasts. It was not until 1853, though, that Congress appropriated funds to survey several routes for the transcontinental railroad. The actual building of the railroad would have to wait even longer, as North-South tensions prevented Congress from reaching an agreement on where the line would begin.

One year into the Civil War, a Republican-controlled Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act (1862), guaranteeing public land grants and loans to the two railroads it chose to build the transcontinental line, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. With these in hand, the railroads began work in 1866 from Omaha and Sacramento, forging a northern route across the country. In their eagerness for land, the two lines built right past each other, and the final meeting place had to be renegotiated.

Harsh winters, staggering summer heat and the lawless, rough-and-tumble conditions of newly settled western towns made conditions for the Union Pacific laborers-mainly Civil War veterans of Irish descent-miserable. The overwhelmingly immigrant Chinese work force of the Central Pacific also had its fair share of problems, including brutal 12-hour work days laying tracks over the Sierra Nevada Mountains (they also received lower wages than their white counterparts). On more than one occasion, whole crews would be lost to avalanches, or mishaps with explosives would leave several dead.
READ MORE: Building the Transcontinental Railroad: How 20,000 Chinese Immigrants Made It Happen
For all the adversity they suffered, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific workers were able to finish the railroad-laying nearly 2,000 miles of track-by 1869, ahead of schedule and under budget. Journeys that had taken months by wagon train or weeks by boat now took only days. Their work had an immediate impact: The years following the construction of the railway were years of rapid growth and expansion for the United States, due in large part to the speed and ease of travel that the railroad provided.

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Transcontinental railroad completed, unifying United States

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On May 10, 1869, the presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah, and drive a ceremonial last spike into a rail line that connects their railroads. This made transcontinental railroad travel possible for the first time in U.S. history.

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Date: June 25–26, 1876

Location: Little Bighorn River, Montana Territory

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Story of the Battle - Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument (U.S. National Park Service)

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Story of the Battle of the Little Bighorn

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Date: October 1879 (invention); January 1880 (patent)

Location: Menlo Park, New Jersey

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Thomas Alva Edison, born in Ohio on February 11, 1847, was one of the most well-known inventors of all time. He spent a few of his early years in formal schooling, but he received most of his education at home. Thomas set up a laboratory in the basement of his family’s Michigan home and spent most of his time experimenting. Edison’s mother, Nancy, knew her son was fond of chemistry and electronics, so she gave him books to read on the subjects. One book explained how to perform chemistry experiments at home; Thomas did every one in the book.

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Date: May 6, 1882

Location: Washington, D.C.

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Milestones: 1866–1898 - Office of the Historian

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Date: October 28, 1886

Location: New York Harbor, New York

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In February 1877, Congress approved the use of a site on New York Bedloe's Island, which was suggested by Bartholdi. In May 1884, the statue was completed in France, and three months later the Americans laid the cornerstone for its pedestal in New York Harbor. In June 1885, the dismantled Statue of Liberty arrived in the New World, enclosed in more than 200 packing cases. Its copper sheets were reassembled, and the last rivet of the monument was fitted on October 28, 1886, during a dedication presided over by President Cleveland and attended by numerous French and American dignitaries.

In 1903, a bronze plaque mounted inside the pedestal's lower level was inscribed with "The New Colossus," a sonnet by American poet Emma Lazarus that welcomed immigrants to the United States with the declaration, "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. / I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

In 1892, Ellis Island, adjacent to Bedloe's Island, opened as the chief entry station for immigrants to the United States, and for the next 32 years more than 12 million immigrants were welcomed into New York harbor by the sight of "Lady Liberty." In 1924, the Statue of Liberty was made a national monument, and in 1956 Bedloe's Island was renamed Liberty Island. The statue underwent a major restoration in the 1980s.

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Statue of Liberty dedicated | October 28, 1886 | HISTORY

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The Statue of Liberty, a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States, is dedicated in New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland. Originally known as "Liberty Enlightening the World," the statue was proposed by the French abolitionist Edouard de Laboulaye to commemorate the Franco-American alliance during the [...]

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Date: December 29, 1890

Location: Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota

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Wounded Knee Massacre | Facts, History, & Legacy

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Wounded Knee Massacre (December 29, 1890), the slaughter of approximately 150–300 Lakota Indians by U.S. Army troops in the area of Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota. The massacre was the climax of the U.S. Army’s late 19th-century efforts to repress the Plains Indians.

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Date: July 6, 1892

Location: Homestead, Pennsylvania

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Homestead Strike, also called Homestead riot, violent labour dispute between the Carnegie Steel Company and many of its workers that occurred on July 6, 1892, in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The strike pitted the company's management (which included owner American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and American industrialist Henry Clay Frick), the strikebreakers (replacement workers) who had been hired, and the Pinkerton National Detective Agency against members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, who worked for the company. A gun battle resulted in which a number of Pinkerton agents and strikers were killed and many were injured.

In the 1880s and 1890s, Andrew Carnegie had built the Carnegie Steel Company into one of the largest and most-profitable steel companies in the United States. The Homestead steel mill, located a few miles from Pittsburgh along the Monongahela River, was one of the largest of Carnegie's mills. Over the course of the 1880s, several unions were broken at other mills and industrial plants around the country, but in 1892 the workers of the Homestead mill were still represented by the powerful Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Although the union was made up of skilled workers and craftsmen, they were also supported by some 3,000 nonunion workers, who were overwhelmingly eastern and southern European immigrants and their sons.

The contract between the union and Carnegie Steel was set to expire on July 1, 1892, and Carnegie, who was in Scotland at the time, gave his operations manager, Frick, carte blanche to break the union ahead of this deadline. Frick opened his campaign by cutting the workers' wages. The union, understandably, rejected the wage cut. In late June, Frick responded by locking the workers out and building a massive barbed-wire-topped fence around the plant. The workers dubbed the plant "Fort Frick." On July 2 Frick fired all 3,800 workers, and during the dark early hours of July 6, a force of 300 Pinkerton agents-private security guards hired by Frick-traveled up the river in two covered barges to occupy the plant.

The workers understood that this was the prelude to replacing them with nonunion labourers, whom they called "scabs." Thousands of workers and their families stormed the plant before dawn and rushed the pier where the guards were trying to dock. Inevitably, shots were fired, and for the next 12 hours, the Pinkertons and the workers exchanged intense fire. Eventually, the workers accepted the surrender of the Pinkertons, who were led off their barges and to the local jail for protection. However, many Pinkertons were savagely beaten by the crowd along the way to the jail, and the barges they arrived on were burned. Later that night the Pinkertons were released and sent away from the town on a train bound for Pittsburgh. At least three Pinkertons and seven workers were killed during the battle and its aftermath.

The workers then took control of the steel mill, but this did not last long. Frick asked Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Emory Pattison for help; he responded by sending in 8,500 soldiers of the state National Guard. The plant was turned over to the militiamen on July 12. By July 15 the plant was again operational but with replacement workers.

Public support for the strikers, undermined by the brutal treatment of the surrendered Pinkertons, suffered more damage with an assassination attempt on Frick by Russian anarchist Alexander Berkman, who was not connected to the union, on July 23. In the meantime, waves of criminal charges were lodged against scores of union leaders and workers. Although almost all were eventually acquitted, the charges meant that the union leaders languished in jail, out of touch with their members, as the strikebreaking proceeded.

The conflict between the union workers and the strikebreakers, meanwhile, took on racial overtones in the fall of 1892. The union barred African Americans; many of the strikebreakers, therefore, were African Americans brought in from the South. Given the alternatives they faced in the rural South, the steelworker jobs, even at the lower wages, provided them with a better life. Another riot in November 1892 pitted some 2,000 white workers against African American workers and their families, and several people were severely wounded by gunfire. However, by November 21 the union had given up, and some workers reapplied for jobs at the mill, agreeing to 12-hour days and reduced wages.

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Homestead Strike | Summary & Significance

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Survey of the Homestead Strike, the violent labour dispute between the Carnegie Steel Company and many of its workers that occurred on July 6, 1892, in Homestead, Pennsylvania. Learn more about who was involved, why the strike occurred, what its outcome was, and what its lasting significance is.

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Date: May 18, 1896

Location: Washington, D.C.

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How did Plessy v. Ferguson affect segregation in the United States?

Plessy v. Ferguson, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on May 18, 1896, by a seven-to-one majority (one justice did not participate), advanced the controversial " separate but equal" doctrine for assessing the constitutionality of racial segregation laws. Plessy v. Ferguson was the first major inquiry into the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment's (1868) equal-protection clause, which prohibits the states from denying "equal protection of the laws" to any person within their jurisdictions. Although the majority opinion did not contain the phrase "separate but equal," it gave constitutional sanction to laws designed to achieve racial segregation by means of separate and supposedly equal public facilities and services for African Americans and whites. It served as a controlling judicial precedent until it was overturned by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954).

Background

The case originated in 1892 as a challenge to Louisiana's Separate Car Act (1890). The law required that all railroads operating in the state provide "equal but separate accommodations" for white and African American passengers and prohibited passengers from entering accommodations other than those to which they had been assigned on the basis of their race. In 1891 a group of Creole professionals in New Orleans formed the Citizens' Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law. They hired Albion Tourgée, a Reconstruction-era judge and social reformer, as their legal counsel. As plaintiff in the test case the committee chose a person of mixed race in order to support its contention that the law could not be consistently applied, because it failed to define the white and "coloured" races. Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth African American, purchased a rail ticket for travel within Louisiana and took a seat in a car reserved for white passengers. (The state Supreme Court had ruled earlier that the law could not be applied to interstate travel.) After refusing to move to a car for African Americans, he was arrested and charged with violating the Separate Car Act. At Plessy's trial in U.S. District Court, Judge John H. Ferguson dismissed his contention that the act was unconstitutional. After the state Supreme Court affirmed the district court's ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari, and oral arguments were heard on April 13, 1896. The court rendered its decision one month later, on May 18.

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Plessy v. Ferguson | Summary, Ruling, Background, & Impact

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Plessy v. Ferguson, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on May 18, 1896, by a seven-to-one majority (one justice did not participate), advanced the controversial 'separate but equal' doctrine for assessing the constitutionality of racial segregation laws.

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Date: December 17, 1903

Location: Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

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Samuel Langley testing off a houseboat in 1893.
USAF

Since 1899, Wilbur and Orville Wright had been scientifically experimenting with the concepts of flight. They labored in relative obscurity, while the experiments of Samuel Langley of the Smithsonian were followed in the press and underwritten by the War Department. Yet Langley, as others before him, had failed to achieve powered flight. They relied on brute power to keep their theoretically stable machines aloft, sending along a hapless passenger and hoping for the best. It was the Wrights' genius and vision to see that humans would have to fly their machines, that the problems of flight could not be solved from the ground. In Wilbur's words, "It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill." With over a thousand glides from atop Big Kill Devil Hill, the Wrights made themselves the first true pilots. These flying skills were a crucial component of their invention. Before they ever attempted powered flight, the Wright brothers were masters of the air.

A 1928 reproduction of the Wright brothers' engine for 1903 Flyer.
Library of Congress; Prints and Photographs Division; LC-W86- 58

Their glider experiments on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, though frustrating at times, had led them down the path of discovery. Through those experiments, they had solved the problem of sustained lift and more importantly they could now control an aircraft while in flight. The brothers felt they were now ready to truly fly. But first, the Wrights had to power their aircraft. Gasoline engine technology had recently advanced to where its use in airplanes was feasible. Unable to find a suitable lightweight commercial engine, the brothers designed their own. It was cruder and less powerful than Samuel Langley's, but the Wrights understood that relatively little power was needed with efficient lifting surfaces and propellers. Such propellers were not available, however. Scant relevant data could be derived from marine propeller theory. Using their air tunnel data, they designed the first efficient airplane propeller, one of their most original and purely scientific achievements.

Returning to their camp at the Kill Devil Hills, they mounted the engine on the new 40-foot, 605-pound Flyer with double tails and elevators. The engine drove two pusher propellers with chains, one crossed to make the props rotate in opposite directions to counteract a twisting tendency in flight. A balky engine and broken propeller shaft slowed them, until they were finally ready on December 14th. In order to decide who would fly first, the brother tossed a coin. Wilbur won the coin toss, but lost his chance to be the first to fly when he oversteered with the elevator after leaving the launching rail. The flyer, climbed too steeply, stalled, and dove into the sand. The first flight would have to wait on repairs.

December 17, 1903
Three days later, they were ready for the second attempt. The 27-mph wind was harder than they would have liked, since their predicted cruising speed was only 30-35 mph. The headwind would slow their groundspeed to a crawl, but they proceeded anyway. With a sheet, they signaled the volunteers from the nearby lifesaving station that they were about to try again. Now it was Orville's turn.

Remembering Wilbur's experience, he positioned himself and tested the controls. The stick that moved the horizontal elevator controlled climb and descent. The cradle that he swung with his hips warped the wings and swung the vertical tails, which in combination turned the machine. A lever controlled the gas flow and airspeed recorder. The controls were simple and few, but Orville knew it would take all his finesse to handle the new and heavier aircraft.

Orville takes off with Wilbur running beside, December 17, 1903.
NPS

At 10:35, he released the restraining wire. The flyer moved down the rail as Wilbur steadied the wings. Just as Orville left the ground, John Daniels from the lifesaving station snapped the shutter on a preset camera, capturing the historic image of the airborne aircraft with Wilbur running alongside. Again, the flyer was unruly, pitching up and down as Orville overcompensated with the controls. But he kept it aloft until it hit the sand about 120 feet from the rail. Into the 27-mph wind, the groundspeed had been 6.8 mph, for a total airspeed of 34 mph. The brothers took turns flying three more times that day, getting a feel for the controls and increasing their distance with each flight. Wilbur's second flight - the fourth and last of the day - was an impressive 852 feet in 59 seconds.

This was the real thing, transcending the powered hops and glides others had achieved. The Wright machine had flown. But it would not fly again; after the last flight it was caught by a gust of wind, rolled over, and damaged beyond easy repair. With their flying season over, the Wrights sent their father a matter-of-fact telegram reporting the modest numbers behind their epochal achievement.

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1903-The First Flight - Wright Brothers National Memorial (U.S. National Park Service)

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Since 1899, Wilbur and Orville Wright had been scientifically experimenting with the concepts of flight. They labored in relative obscurity, while the experiments of Samuel Langley of the Smithsonian were followed in the press and underwritten by the War Department. Yet Langley, as others before him, had failed to achieve powered flight.

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Date: February 26, 1906

Location: Chicago, Illinois

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The Jungle | Summary, Characters, & Facts

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The Jungle, novel by Upton Sinclair, published serially in 1905 and as a single-volume book in 1906. The most famous, influential, and enduring of all muckraking novels, The Jungle was an exposé of conditions in the Chicago stockyards. Because of the public response, the U.S. Pure Food and Drug Act…

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Date: March 25, 1911

Location: New York City, New York

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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - Date, Significance, Cause | HISTORY

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire, which killed 146 New Yorkers in 1911, stemmed from poor working conditions and led to changes in safety laws.

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Date: December 23, 1913

Location: Washington, D.C.

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The Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington DC.

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Date: April 6, 1917

Location: Washington, D.C.

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On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson cited Germany's violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, as well as its attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against the United States, as his reasons for declaring war. On April 4, 1917, the U.S. Senate voted in support of the measure to declare war on Germany. The House concurred two days later. The United States later declared war on German ally Austria-Hungary on December 7, 1917.

Germany's resumption of submarine attacks on passenger and merchant ships in 1917 became the primary motivation behind Wilson's decision to lead the United States into World War I. Following the sinking of an unarmed French boat, the Sussex, in the English Channel in March 1916, Wilson threatened to sever diplomatic relations with Germany unless the German Government refrained from attacking all passenger ships and allowed the crews of enemy merchant vessels to abandon their ships prior to any attack. On May 4, 1916, the German Government accepted these terms and conditions in what came to be known as the "Sussex pledge."

By January 1917, however, the situation in Germany had changed. During a wartime conference that month, representatives from the German Navy convinced the military leadership and Kaiser Wilhelm II that a resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare could help defeat Great Britain within five months. German policymakers argued that they could violate the "Sussex pledge" since the United States could no longer be considered a neutral party after supplying munitions and financial assistance to the Allies. Germany also believed that the United States had jeopardized its neutrality by acquiescing to the Allied blockade of Germany.

German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg protested this decision, believing that resuming submarine warfare would draw the United States into the war on behalf of the Allies. This, he argued, would lead to the defeat of Germany. Despite these warnings, the German Government decided to resume unrestricted submarine attacks on all Allied and neutral shipping within prescribed war zones, reckoning that German submarines would end the war long before the first U.S. troopships landed in Europe. Accordingly, on January 31, 1917, German Ambassador to the United States Count Johann von Bernstorff presented U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing a note declaring Germany's intention to restart unrestricted submarine warfare the following day.

Stunned by the news, President Wilson went before Congress on February 3 to announce that he had severed diplomatic relations with Germany. However, he refrained from asking for a declaration of war because he doubted that the U.S. public would support him unless he provided ample proof that Germany intended to attack U.S. ships without warning. Wilson left open the possibility of negotiating with Germany if its submarines refrained from attacking U.S. shipping. Nevertheless, throughout February and March 1917, German submarines targeted and sank several U.S. ships, resulting in the deaths of numerous U.S. seamen and citizens.

On February 26, Wilson asked Congress for the authority to arm U.S. merchant ships with U.S. naval personnel and equipment. While the measure would probably have passed in a vote, several anti-war Senators led a successful filibuster that consumed the remainder of the congressional session. As a result of this setback, President Wilson decided to arm U.S. merchant ships by executive order, citing an old anti-piracy law that gave him the authority to do so.

While Wilson weighed his options regarding the submarine issue, he also had to address the question of Germany's attempts to cement a secret alliance with Mexico. On January 19, 1917, British naval intelligence intercepted and decrypted a telegram sent by German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the German Ambassador in Mexico City. The "Zimmermann Telegram" promised the Mexican Government that Germany would help Mexico recover the territory it had ceded to the United States following the Mexican-American War. In return for this assistance, Germany asked for Mexican support in the war.

The "Zimmermann Telegram"

Initially, the British had not shared the news of the Zimmermann Telegram with U.S. officials because they did not want the Germans to discover that British code breakers had cracked the German code. However, following Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in February, the British decided to use the note to help sway U.S. official and public opinion in favor of joining the war. The British finally forwarded the intercepted telegram to President Wilson on February 24. The U.S. press carried the story the following week.

Despite the shocking news of the Zimmermann Telegram, Wilson still hesitated asking for a declaration of war. He waited until March 20 before convening a Cabinet meeting to broach the matter-almost a month after he had first seen the telegram. The precise reasons for Wilson's decision to choose war in 1917 remain the subject of debate among historians, especially in light of his efforts to avoid war in 1915 after the sinking of the British passenger liners Lusitania and Arabic, which had led to the deaths of 131 U.S. citizens.

However, by 1917, the continued submarine attacks on U.S. merchant and passenger ships, and the "Zimmermann Telegram's" implied threat of a German attack on the United States, swayed U.S. public opinion in support of a declaration of war. Furthermore, international law stipulated that the placing of U.S. naval personnel on civilian ships to protect them from German submarines already constituted an act of war against Germany. Finally, the Germans, by their actions, had demonstrated that they had no interest in seeking a peaceful end to the conflict. These reasons all contributed to President Wilson's decision to ask Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. They also encouraged Congress to grant Wilson's request and formally declare war on Germany.

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Milestones: 1914-1920 - Office of the Historian

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Nineteenth Amendment Ratified (Women’s Suffrage)

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Nineteenth Amendment Ratified (Women’s Suffrage)

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Date: August 18, 1920

Location: Washington, D.C.

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Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote.
The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle-victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920.

Beginning in the 1800s, women organized, petitioned, and picketed to win the right to vote, but it took them decades to accomplish their purpose. Between 1878, when the amendment was first introduced in Congress, and August 18, 1920, when it was ratified, champions of voting rights for women worked tirelessly, but strategies for achieving their goal varied. Some pursued a strategy of passing suffrage acts in each state-nine western states adopted woman suffrage legislation by 1912. Others challenged male-only voting laws in the courts. Some suffragists used more confrontational tactics such as picketing, silent vigils, and hunger strikes. Often supporters met fierce resistance. Opponents heckled, jailed, and sometimes physically abused them.

By 1916, almost all of the major suffrage organizations were united behind the goal of a constitutional amendment. When New York adopted woman suffrage in 1917 and President Wilson changed his position to support an amendment in 1918, the political balance began to shift.

On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment, and 2 weeks later, the Senate followed. When Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment on August 18, 1920, the amendment passed its final hurdle of obtaining the agreement of three-fourths of the states. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the ratification on August 26, 1920, changing the face of the American electorate forever.

The campaign for woman suffrage was long, difficult, and sometimes dramatic; yet ratification did not ensure full enfranchisement. Decades of struggle to include African Americans and other minority women in the promise of voting rights remained. Many women remained unable to vote long into the 20th century because of discriminatory state voting laws.

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19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women's Right to Vote (1920)

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EnlargeDownload Link Citation: Joint Resolution of Congress proposing a constitutional amendment extending the right of suffrage to women, approved June 4, 1919.; Ratified Amendments, 1795-1992; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.

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Date: October 29, 1929 ("Black Tuesday")

Location: New York City, New York

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The Roaring Twenties roared loudest and longest on the New York Stock Exchange. Share prices rose to unprecedented heights. The Dow Jones Industrial Average increased six-fold from sixty-three in August 1921 to 381 in September 1929. After prices peaked, economist Irving Fisher proclaimed, "stock prices have reached 'what looks like a permanently high plateau.'"

The epic boom ended in a cataclysmic bust. On Black Monday, October 28, 1929, the Dow declined nearly 13 percent. On the following day, Black Tuesday, the market dropped nearly 12 percent. By mid-November, the Dow had lost almost half of its value. The slide continued through the summer of 1932, when the Dow closed at 41.22, its lowest value of the twentieth century, 89 percent below its peak. The Dow did not return to its pre-crash heights until November 1954.

Chart 1: Dow Jones Industrial Average Index daily closing price, January 2, 1920, to December 31, 1954. Data plotted as a curve. Units are index value. Minor tick marks indicate the first trading day of the year. As shown in the figure, the index peaked on September 3, 1929, closing at 381.17. The index declined until July 8, 1932, when it closed at $41.22. The index did not reach the 1929 high again until November 23, 1954. (Source: FRED, https://fred.stlouisfed.org (graph by: Sam Marshall, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond)

The financial boom occurred during an era of optimism. Families prospered. Automobiles, telephones, and other new technologies proliferated. Ordinary men and women invested growing sums in stocks and bonds. A new industry of brokerage houses, investment trusts, and margin accounts enabled ordinary people to purchase corporate equities with borrowed funds. Purchasers put down a fraction of the price, typically 10 percent, and borrowed the rest. The stocks that they bought served as collateral for the loan. Borrowed money poured into equity markets, and stock prices soared.

Skeptics existed, however. Among them was the Federal Reserve. The governors of many Federal Reserve Banks and a majority of the Federal Reserve Board believed stock-market speculation diverted resources from productive uses, like commerce and industry. The Board asserted that the "Federal Reserve Act does not ... contemplate the use of the resources of the Federal Reserve Banks for the creation or extension of speculative credit" (Chandler 1971, 56).

The Board's opinion stemmed from the text of the act. Section 13 authorized reserve banks to accept as collateral for discount loans assets that financed agricultural, commercial, and industrial activity but prohibited them from accepting as collateral "notes, drafts, or bills covering merely investments or issued or drawn for the purpose of carrying or trading in stocks, bonds or other investment securities, except bonds and notes of the Government of the United States" (Federal Reserve Act 1913).

Section 14 of the act extended those powers and prohibitions to purchases in the open market.

These provisions reflected the theory of real bills, which had many adherents among the authors of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913 and leaders of the Federal Reserve System in 1929. This theory indicated that the central bank should issue money when production and commerce expanded, and contract the supply of currency and credit when economic activity contracted.

The Federal Reserve decided to act. The question was how. The Federal Reserve Board and the leaders of the reserve banks debated this question. To rein in the tide of call loans, which fueled the financial euphoria, the Board favored a policy of direct action. The Board asked reserve banks to deny requests for credit from member banks that loaned funds to stock speculators.The Board also warned the public of the dangers of speculation.

The governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, George Harrison, favored a different approach. He wanted to raise the discount lending rate. This action would directly increase the rate that banks paid to borrow funds from the Federal Reserve and indirectly raise rates paid by all borrowers, including firms and consumers. In 1929, New York repeatedly requested to raise its discount rate; the Board denied several of the requests. In August the Board finally acquiesced to New York's plan of action, and New York's discount rate reached 6 percent.

The Federal Reserve's rate increase had unintended consequences. Because of the international gold standard, the Fed's actions forced foreign central banks to raise their own interest rates. Tight-money policies tipped economies around the world into recession. International commerce contracted, and the international economy slowed (Eichengreen 1992; Friedman and Schwartz 1963; Temin 1993).

The financial boom, however, continued. The Federal Reserve watched anxiously. Commercial banks continued to loan money to speculators, and other lenders invested increasing sums in loans to brokers. In September 1929, stock prices gyrated, with sudden declines and rapid recoveries. Some financial leaders continued to encourage investors to purchase equities, including Charles E. Mitchell, the president of the National City Bank (now Citibank) and a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.In October, Mitchell and a coalition of bankers attempted to restore confidence by publicly purchasing blocks of shares at high prices. The effort failed. Investors began selling madly. Share prices plummeted.

A crowd gathers outside the New York Stock Exchange following the 1929 crash. (Photo: Bettmann/Bettmann/Getty Images)

Funds that fled the stock market flowed into New York City's commercial banks. These banks also assumed millions of dollars in stock-market loans. The sudden surges strained banks. As deposits increased, banks' reserve requirements rose; but banks' reserves fell as depositors withdrew cash, banks purchased loans, and checks (the principal method of depositing funds) cleared slowly. The counterpoised flows left many banks temporarily short of reserves.

To relieve the strain, the New York Fed sprang into action. It purchased government securities on the open market, expedited lending through its discount window, and lowered the discount rate. It assured commercial banks that it would supply the reserves they needed. These actions increased total reserves in the banking system, relaxed the reserve constraint faced by banks in New York City, and enabled financial institutions to remain open for business and satisfy their customers' demands during the crisis. The actions also kept short term interest rates from rising to disruptive levels, which frequently occurred during financial crises.

At the time, the New York Fed's actions were controversial. The Board and several reserve banks complained that New York exceeded its authority. In hindsight, however, these actions helped to contain the crisis in the short run. The stock market collapsed, but commercial banks near the center of the storm remained in operation (Friedman and Schwartz 1963).

While New York's actions protected commercial banks, the stock-market crash still harmed commerce and manufacturing. The crash frightened investors and consumers. Men and women lost their life savings, feared for their jobs, and worried whether they could pay their bills. Fear and uncertainty reduced purchases of big ticket items, like automobiles, that people bought with credit. Firms - like Ford Motors - saw demand decline, so they slowed production and furloughed workers. Unemployment rose, and the contraction that had begun in the summer of 1929 deepened (Romer 1990; Calomiris 1993).

While the crash of 1929 curtailed economic activity, its impact faded within a few months, and by the fall of 1930 economic recovery appeared imminent. Then, problems in another portion of the financial system turned what may have been a short, sharp recession into our nation's longest, deepest depression.

From the stock market crash of 1929, economists - including the leaders of the Federal Reserve - learned at least two lessons.

First, central banks - like the Federal Reserve - should be careful when acting in response to equity markets. Detecting and deflating financial bubbles is difficult. Using monetary policy to restrain investors' exuberance may have broad, unintended, and undesirable consequences.

Second, when stock market crashes occur, their damage can be contained by following the playbook developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the fall of 1929.

Economists and historians debated these issues during the decades following the Great Depression. Consensus coalesced around the time of the publication of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States in 1963. Their conclusions concerning these events are cited by many economists, including members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors such as Ben Bernanke, Donald Kohn and Frederic Mishkin.

In reaction to the financial crisis of 2008 scholars may be rethinking these conclusions. Economists have been questioning whether central banks can and should prevent asset market bubbles and how concerns about financial stability should influence monetary policy. These widespread discussions hearken back to the debates on this issue among the leaders of the Federal Reserve during the 1920s.

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Gary Richardson

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On Black Monday, October 28, 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined nearly 13 percent. Federal Reserve leaders differed on how to respond to the event and support the financial system.

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Date: November 8, 1932

Location: United States (nationwide)

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How many times was FDR elected President of the United States ?
Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President of the United States four times: 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944. Prior to the third-term election of 1940, it was a presidential tradition set by George Washington that presidents only held the office for two terms. As a result of FDR's unprecedented four terms, the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1951, limiting all future presidents to two elected terms.

Who were FDR's opponents?
FDR's Republican Party opponents during the four presidential elections were: 1932, President Herbert Hoover; 1936, Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas; 1940, Wendell L. Wilkie of Ohio; 1944, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York.

When was FDR first inaugurated as President of the United States ?
FDR was first inaugurated as 32nd President on March 4, 1933. The date of March 4 was set by the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Effective in 1937, however, the presidential inauguration date was changed to January 20 by the 20th Amendment.

Who were FDR's Vice Presidents?
FDR had three Vice-Presidents during his four terms in office: John Nance Garner of Texas (March 4, 1933 - January 20, 1941), Henry Agard Wallace of Iowa (January 20, 1941 - January 20, 1945), and Harry S. Truman of Missouri (January 20, 1945 - April 12, 1945).

Who were FDR's Cabinet Officers?
FDR's Cabinet Officers were as follows:

Secretary of State
Cordell Hull, 1933-1944
Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., 1944-1945

Secretary of Treasury
William H. Woodin, 1933
Henry Morgenthau, Jr., 1934-1945

Secretary of War
George H. Dern, 1933-1936
Harry H. Woodring, 1936-1940
Henry L. Stimson, 1940-1945

Attorney General (Department of Justice)
Homer S. Cummings, 1933-1939
Francis W. (Frank) Murphy, 1939-1940
Robert H. Jackson, 1940-1941
Francis Biddle, 1941-1945

Postmaster General
James A. Farley, 1933-1940
Frank C. Walker, 1940-1945

Secretary of the Navy
Claude A. Swanson, 1933-1939
Charles Edison, 1940
William Franklin Knox, 1940-1944
James V. Forrestal, 1944-1947

Secretary of the Interior
Harold L. Ickes, 1933-1946

Secretary of Agriculture
Henry A. Wallace, 1933-1940
Claude R. Wickard, 1940-1945

Secretary of Commerce
Daniel C. Roper, 1933-1938
Harry L. Hopkins, 1938-1940
Jesse H. Jones, 1940-1945
Henry A. Wallace, 1945-1946

Secretary of Labor
Frances Perkins, 1933-1945

What were fireside chats and how many did FDR make during his presidency?
When FDR became president in 1933, he believed that the best way to comfort and inform the public about his administration and its policies was to address them on the radio. He considered it most effective to talk to the people as if he had joined them in their living rooms or kitchens for a relaxed, informal conversation about one or two specific topics. The term "Fireside Chat" was not coined by FDR, but rather was used by a reporter to describe FDR's speech of May 7, 1933. The term was quickly adopted throughout the media and by FDR. There was no solid definition as to what constituted a Fireside Chat. As a result, there is some dispute as to the total number of Fireside Chats that FDR delivered.

The following is a list of the thirty-one speeches that have been identified as Fireside Chats:

* WH= White House HP= Hyde Park

1. On the Bank Crisis (March 12, 1933) WH

2. Outlining the New Deal Program (May 7, 1933) WH

3. First Hundred Days: The Purposes and Foundations of the Recovery Program (July 24, 1933) WH

4. The Currency Situation (October 22, 1933) WH

5. Review of the Achievements of the Seventy-third Congress (June 28, 1934) WH

6. Moving Forward to Greater Freedom and Security (September 30, 1934) WH

7. Works Progress Administration and Social Security (April 28, 1935) WH

8. Drought Conditions and the Plight of Farmers (September 6, 1936) WH

9. Reorganization of the Judiciary (March 9, 1937) WH

10. New Proposals to Special Session of Congress and on the Storm Clouds Abroad (October 12, 1937) WH

11. The Unemployment Census (November 14, 1937) WH

12. Economic Conditions (April 14, 1938) WH

13. The Democratic Party Primaries (June 24, 1938) WH

14. The War in Europe (September 3, 1939) WH

15. National Defense and Military Readiness (May 26, 1940) WH

16. Arsenal of Democracy: The Lend-Lease Program (December 29, 1940) WH

17. Proclaiming a National Emergency (May 27, 1941) WH

18. Freedom of the Seas (September 11, 1941) WH

19. War with Japan (December 9, 1941) WH

20. Progress of the War (February 23, 1942) WH

21. National Economic Policy During War: The Call for Sacrifice (April 28, 1942) WH

22. Food Price Stabilization and the Progress of the War (September 7, 1942) HP

23. Report on the Home Front (October 12, 1942) WH

24. The Coal Strike Crisis (May 2, 1943) WH

25. The Fall of Mussolini and Plans for Peace (July 28, 1943) WH

26. Italian Armistice and Launching the Third War Loan Drive (September 8, 1943) WH

27. Report on the Teheran and Cairo Conferences (December 24, 1943) HP

28. State of the Union: National Service and Economic Bill of Rights (January 11, 1944) WH

29. The Capture of Rome (June 5, 1944) WH

30. Launching the Fifth War Loan Drive (June 12, 1944) WH

31. Fireside Chat (Abridged) Version of Message to Congress on Return from Yalta Conference: Work-or-Fight and Vision for the United Nations (January 6, 1945) WH

Did women play a significant part in FDR's administrations?
During FDR's presidency, women were appointed to positions that were unprecedented in terms of both number of appointments as well as rank in the United States government.

The following is a list of some of the "firsts" achieved by women during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt:

Frances Perkins, New York: First woman member of a President's Cabinet. Secretary of Labor.

Ruth Bryan Owen Rohde, New York and Florida: First woman U.S Minister. She was U.S. Minister to Denmark and Iceland (1933). (Daughter of William Jennings Bryan)

J. Borden Harriman, District of Columbia: First woman U.S. Minister to Norway (1937).

Nellie Tayloe Ross, Wyoming: First woman Director of U.S. Mint (1933).

Josephine Roche, Colorado: First woman Assistant Secretary U.S. Treasury (1934).

Blair Banister, Virginia: First woman U.S. Assistant Treasurer.

Florence Allen, Ohio: First woman appointed to U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (1934).

Mary W. Dewson, Maine: First woman member of Social Security Board (1937).

Emily Newell Blair, Missouri: Chairman, Consumer's Advisory Board, NRA.

Harriet Elliott, North Carolina: Only woman member of National Defense Advisory Commission; first defense agency set up by the President (1940).

Marion J. Harron, California: First woman member of U.S. Court of Tax Appeals.

Carrick H. Buck, New Mexico: First woman Judge Circuit Court, Territory of Hawaii (1934).

Jewell W. Swofford, Missouri: First woman member of U.S. Employees' Compensation Commission.

Margaret Hickey, Missouri: Chairperson of the Women's Advisory Committee, War Manpower Commission (1942).

Josephine Schain, New York: First woman to be named on any United Nations Conference. Served as U.S. Delegate to U.N. Conference of Food and Agriculture.

What was the Good Neighbor Policy?
The Good Neighbor Policy was the common name (first expressed in the First Inaugural Address in 1933) for FDR's foreign policy with regard to Latin America. Under the new policy, the United States pledged that it would treat Latin American nations with respect and avoid intervening in their foreign and domestic affairs.

The goal of the policy was to strengthen the United States economy by increasing trade with Latin America. A necessary prerequisite to increased trade was the improvement of political relations with those countries and the assurance that the United States would no longer interfere in the affairs of its neighbors. As a by-product of the policy, all Latin American countries eventually joined the United States in the war against the Axis Powers.

What was FDR's role in establishing the United Nations?
Even as the United States was moving closer to war, FDR began to formulate his ideas for a post-war world. FDR first discussed a "family of nations" with Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the Atlantic Charter conference in August 1941. In January 1942, representatives of 26 nations met in Washington, DC and signed the United Nations Declaration that pledged to win the war against the Axis Powers. FDR suggested the name "United Nations" for the group, and in October 1943 he sent representatives to Moscow to begin preliminary discussions with their counterparts from the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and China about the structure of a world political organization.

At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, FDR, Churchill and Premier Stalin of the Soviet Union agreed that the "Big Five" nations (United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, France and China) would be permanent members of a United Nations Security Council, a special committee with powers to keep the peace. The leaders also agreed to call a conference in San Francisco, California on April 25, 1945 to prepare a Charter for the new organization. FDR planned to attend the opening of the San Francisco Conference, but he died in Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945. Despite this loss, the San Francisco Conference reached final agreement, and delegates from fifty nations signed the Charter on June 26, 1945.

On October 24, 1945 the Big Five plus one-half of the other nations had ratified the Charter, and the United Nations was officially born.

Was there ever an assassination attempt on FDR?
There was never an assassination attempt on FDR after he was inaugurated President of the United States. However, after the presidential election of 1932, and before the inauguration in March 1933, FDR nearly lost his life to an assassin's bullet.

On February 15, 1933, FDR was in Miami, Florida at a public rally accompanied by Anton Cermak, the Mayor of Chicago. Joseph Zangara, a thirty-three year old disillusioned Italian immigrant jumped onto a park bench and fired four shots towards FDR's car. FDR was not hit, but Mayor Cermak was wounded mortally and died a few weeks later.

The public and press hailed FDR's courage in refusing to allow his driver to leave the scene before first attending to the wounded Mayor Cermak and driving him to the hospital. Zangara later stated that he did not hate FDR personally, but rather he hated all government officials and all rich people no matter from which country they came. Zangara was executed for the murder of Mayor Cermak.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt's Presidency - FDR Presidential Library & Museum

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How many times was FDR elected President of the United States ? Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President of the United States four times: 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944.

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Date: August 14, 1935

Location: Washington, D.C.

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This note is the eighth in a series tracing the development of the Security Act in Congress 50 years ago. It was prepared by Thomas E. Price, Office of Research, Statistics, and International Policy, Office of Policy, Social Security Administration.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Bill into law on August 14, 1935, only 14 months after sending a special message to Congress on June 8, 1934, that promised a plan for social insurance as a safeguard "against the hazards and vicissitudes of life." The 32-page Act was the culmination of work begun by the Committee on Economic Security (CES), created by the President on June 29, 1934, and became, as he said at the signing ceremony, "a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete. " (For developments in the old-age benefits portion of the Act since 1935, see Martha A. McSteen, "Fifty Years of Social Security.")

The President transmitted the Committee's report to the 74th Congress on January 17, 1935, almost equally dividing the 14 months spanning the work of the Committee and the work of the Congress. Today, 50 years later, Wilbur J. Cohen, who was a 21-year-old research assistant to the Executive Director of the CES and later served as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, writes: "If any piece of social legislation can be called historic or revolutionary, in breaking with the past and in terms of long run impact, it is the Social Security Act. "

Although the Congress modified many details of the Economic Security Bill introduced on behalf of the CES, most of the programs recommended by the Committee were adopted. Earlier installments in this series have discussed the changes as they occurred during the legislative process.

The Social Security Act established two types of provisions for old-age security: (1) Federal aid to the States to enable them to provide cash pensions to their needy aged, and (2) a system of Federal old-age benefits for retired workers. The first measure was designed to provide immediate assistance to destitute aged individuals. The second was a preventive measure intended to reduce the extent of future dependency among the aged and to assure workers that their years of employment entitled them to a life income.

For needy persons already aged 65 or older, old-age assistancewas provided, by title I, through Federal grants-in-aid to pay half the costs of the pensions, provided that the Federal share did not exceed $15 a month per person. In Mr. Cohen's judgment, the most significant long-range congressional modification of the original proposal was the deletion of the condition that States should provide a "reasonable subsistence compatible with decency and health. "

For the working population under age 65, the Social Security Act created, in title II, an "Old-Age Reserve Account" and authorized payments of old-age benefitsfrom this account to eligible individuals upon attainment of age 65 or on January 1, 1942, whichever was later. The monthly benefit amount was determined by the total amount of wages earned in covered employment after 1936 and before age 65. The initial benefit formula was designed to give greater weight to the earnings of lower-paid workers and persons already middle-aged or older. The minimum monthly benefit was $10 and the maximum was $85.

Only the first $3,000 of annual salary from any one employer would be considered as counting toward the total of annual wages on which benefits would be computed. Less than 10 percent of the workers in commerce and industry earned more than this amount at that time. Large numbers of individuals were not covered, including the self-employed, agricultural and domestic service workers, casual laborers, employees of nonprofit organizations, and those subject to the Railroad Retirement Act of 1935.

There were no monthly survivors benefits. Rather, if a person had earned less than $2,000 in covered employment by age 65, he or she would receive a lump sum payment of 3.5 percent of total wages. Also, if an individual died after 1936 before reaching age 65, his or her estate would receive a lump sum amount equal to 3.5 percent of total covered wages.

Unemployment compensation, temporary cash payments to the involuntarily unemployed, was conceived by the CES as the "front line of defense" from dependency resulting from loss of earnings and as a means of maintaining purchasing power. The unemployment compensation provisions of the Social Security Act were quite similar to those recommended by the CES. The Act set up a Federal-State cooperative system, to be administered by the States, and provided financial assistance from the Federal Government to those States with laws approved by the Social Security Board. In 1935, only Wisconsin had enacted an unemployment program, but the Federal law provided an incentive for all States to establish such programs.

Other provisions of the Social Security Act included four programs recommended by the CES for promoting the health and welfare of children. These programs provided grants-in-aid to States for (1) financial aid to dependent children (ADC), (2) maternal and child health services (MCH), (3) services for crippled children (CCS), and (4) child welfare services (CWS). Further, the Congress strengthened vocational rehabilitation, amending a law enacted in 1920, by providing permanent rather than year-to-year authorizations. Congress also added a title providing grants to States for aid to needy blind individuals.

Finally, as recommended by the CES, the Act broadened public health services to all localities by authorizing $8 million in grants to States to assist in establishing and maintaining adequate public-health services including the training of personnel and provided an additional $2 million for the expansion of public health investigations by the Public Health Service. The Act thus tripled Federal public health expenditures and established a program for the extension of preventive public health services to the entire Nation.

The Act created a Social Security Board (SSB), not as a component of the Department of Labor, as the CES had proposed, but as an independent agency. This organization was to administer the old-age assistance and old-age benefits programs, unemployment compensation, aid to dependent children, and aid to the blind. The Children's Bureau in the Department of Labor was to administer service programs for maternal and child health, crippled children, and child welfare. The Act did not change the administration of public health and vocational rehabilitation.

After signing the bill the President promptly sent the names of the three nominees for members of the SSB to the Senate: John G. Winant, former Republican Governor of New Hampshire, chairman; Vincent M. Miles, former Democratic National Committeeman from Arkansas; and Arthur J. Altmeyer, an Assistant Secretary of Labor who had served as Chairman of the Technical Advisory Board of the CES. They were all confirmed on August 23.

Congress adjourned, however, before approving a supplemental appropriations bill that included operating funds for the SSB. On the last day of the session, Senator Huey Long (D., La.) had filibustered a matter unrelated to social security until the session closed.

The next morning the President called a conference of key leaders, according to Mr. Altmeyer who was present, to see what could be done. John R. McCarl, the Comptroller General, proposed that, since the CES had been financed as a research project by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the SSB could be financed as a research project by the FERA to develop ways and means of putting the Social Security Act into operation.

Despite this inauspicious start, in 1969, J. Douglas Brown, who had been a consultant to the CES, could still write:
"To one who has participated in the planning of the social security system since its inception, the most remarkable outcome over the years is the degree to which fundamental concepts, hammered out in 1934, have guided the development of one of the largest ventures in social engineering in the world. The system remains, basically, national, compulsory, and contributory. Benefits are a matter of right.... Even if time were then available, I doubt that we could have anticipated what experience has shown to be feasible in building a more adequate social security system." References
Altmeyer, Arthur J., The Formative Years of Social Security. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1966.

Brown, J. Douglas, The Genesis of Social Security in America. Princeton, N.J.: Industrial Relations Section, Princeton University, 1969.

Cohen, Wilbur J., "The Development of the Social Security Act of 1935: Reflections Some Fifty Years Later," Minnesota Law Review, December 1983.

Committee on Economic Security, The Factual Back ground of the Social Security Act as Summarized From Staff Reports to the Committee on Economic Security. Washington, D.C.: Social Security Board, 1937.

National Conference on Social Welfare, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition: The Report of the Committee on Economic Security of 1935 and Other Basic Documents Relating to the Development of the Social Security Act. Washington, D.C.: Project on the Federal Social Role, 1985.

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This note is the eighth in a series tracing the development of the Security Act in Congress 50 years ago. It was prepared by Thomas E. Price, Office of Research, Statistics, and International Policy, Office of Policy, Social Security Administration. President Franklin D.

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Date: July 5, 1935

Location: Washington, D.C.

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In the fall of 1934, Senator Wagner began revising his labor disputes bill, determined to build on the experience of the two earlier NIRA boards and to find a solution to the enforcement problem that had plagued them. In February 1935, Wagner introduced the National Labor Relations Act in the Senate. The Wagner Bill proposed to create a new independent agency-the National Labor Relations Board, made up of three members appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate-to enforce employee rights rather than to mediate disputes. It gave employees the right, under Section 7, to form and join unions, and it obligated employers to bargain collectively with unions selected by a majority of the employees in an appropriate bargaining unit. The measure endorsed the principles of exclusive representation and majority rule, provided for enforcement of the Board's rulings, and covered most workers in industries whose operations affected interstate commerce.

Wagner's Bill passed the Senate in May 1935, cleared the House in June, and was signed into law by President Roosevelt on July 5, 1935. A new national labor policy was born.
Photos (left to right): New York Times, July 6, 1935; CIO organizing poster, circa 1935.

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In the fall of 1934, Senator Wagner began revising his labor disputes bill, determined to build on the experience of the two earlier NIRA boards and to find a solution to the enforcement problem that had plagued them. In February 1935, Wagner introduced the National Labor Relations Act in the Senate.

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Date: December 7, 1941

Location: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

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Pearl Harbor Attack, December 7, 1941 | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

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The National WWII Museum commemorates the Day That Will Live in Infamy through articles, oral histories, artifacts, and more.

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Date: June 6, 1944

Location: Normandy, France

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D-Day - Normandy Invasion, Facts & Significance | HISTORY

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Codenamed Operation Overlord, the invasion began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region during World War II. The operation was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and has been called the beginning of the end of war in Europe.

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Date: March 12, 1947

Location: Washington, D.C.

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NOTE TO READERS
"Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations" has been retired and is no longer maintained. For more information, please see the full notice.

With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine effectively reoriented U.S. foreign policy, away from its usual stance of withdrawal from regional conflicts not directly involving the United States, to one of possible intervention in far away conflicts.

The Truman Doctrine arose from a speech delivered by President Truman before a joint session of Congress on . The immediate cause for the speech was a recent announcement by the British Government that, as of March 31, it would no longer provide military and economic assistance to the Greek Government in its civil war against the Greek Communist Party. Truman asked Congress to support the Greek Government against the Communists. He also asked Congress to provide assistance for Turkey, since that nation, too, had previously been dependent on British aid.

At the time, the U.S. Government believed that the Soviet Union supported the Greek Communist war effort and worried that if the Communists prevailed in the Greek civil war, the Soviets would ultimately influence Greek policy. In fact, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had deliberately refrained from providing any support to the Greek Communists and had forced Yugoslav Prime Minister Josip Tito to follow suit, much to the detriment of Soviet-Yugoslav relations. However, a number of other foreign policy problems also influenced President Truman's decision to actively aid Greece and Turkey. In 1946, four setbacks, in particular, had served to effectively torpedo any chance of achieving a durable post-war rapprochement with the Soviet Union: the Soviets' failure to withdraw their troops from northern Iran in early 1946 (as per the terms of the Tehran Declaration of 1943); Soviet attempts to pressure the Iranian Government into granting them oil concessions while supposedly fomenting irredentism by Azerbaijani separatists in northern Iran; Soviet efforts to force the Turkish Government into granting them base and transit rights through the Turkish Straits; and, the Soviet Government's rejection of the Baruch plan for international control over nuclear energy and weapons in June 1946.

In light of the deteriorating relationship with the Soviet Union and the appearance of Soviet meddling in Greek and Turkish affairs, the withdrawal of British assistance to Greece provided the necessary catalyst for the Truman Administration to reorient American foreign policy. Accordingly, in his speech, President Truman requested that Congress provide $400,000,000 worth of aid to both the Greek and Turkish Governments and support the dispatch of American civilian and military personnel and equipment to the region.

Truman justified his request on two grounds. He argued that a Communist victory in the Greek Civil War would endanger the political stability of Turkey, which would undermine the political stability of the Middle East. This could not be allowed in light of the region's immense strategic importance to U.S. national security. Truman also argued that the United States was compelled to assist "free peoples" in their struggles against "totalitarian regimes," because the spread of authoritarianism would "undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States." In the words of the Truman Doctrine, it became "the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

Truman argued that the United States could no longer stand by and allow the forcible expansion of Soviet totalitarianism into free, independent nations, because American national security now depended upon more than just the physical security of American territory. Rather, in a sharp break with its traditional avoidance of extensive foreign commitments beyond the Western Hemisphere during peacetime, the Truman Doctrine committed the United States to actively offering assistance to preserve the political integrity of democratic nations when such an offer was deemed to be in the best interest of the United States.

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Milestones: 1945-1952 - Office of the Historian

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Date: May 17, 1954

Location: Washington, D.C. (U.S. Supreme Court)

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NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund

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A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi... has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.

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Brown v. Board of Education Celebrating the 67th Anniversary of LDF's Seminal Case May 17, 1954 marks a defining moment in the history of the United States. On that day, the Supreme Court declared the doctrine of "separate but equal" unconstitutional and handed LDF the most celebrated victory in its storied history.

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Date: December 5, 1955

Location: Montgomery, Alabama

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The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute

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On 5 December, 90 percent of Montgomery's black citizens stayed off the buses. That afternoon, the city's ministers and leaders met to discuss the possibility of extending the boycott into a long-term campaign. During this meeting the MIA was formed, and King was elected president.

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Date: July 2, 1964

Location: Washington, D.C.

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Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

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Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

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Date: April 30, 1975

Location: Saigon, South Vietnam (now Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)

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A Spotlight on a Primary Source by Edward M. Kennedy

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The end of the Vietnam War: conscience, resistance, and reconciliation, 1973 | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

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The end of the Vietnam War: conscience, resistance, and reconciliation, 1973 | | Vietnam was “America’s longest war.” While US operations tended to be very limited between 1945 and 1964, escalation in the early months of 1965 eventually led to the deployment of more than 2.5 million military personnel to South Vietnam through 1973. While the literature on the Vietnam War is voluminous, the issue of draft resistance has either been overlooked or misunderstood by historians. Most people in fact do make a distinction between draft evasion and draft resistance. The virtual omission of draft resistance from the historical accounts of the Vietnam War is a manifestation of the period’s nagging effect on American culture and memory. In January 1973, the Paris Peace Accords officially ended US involvement in the Vietnam War, although the majority of US troops would not leave until August of that year and the fighting between North and South Vietnam would continue until the fall of Saigon in 1975. Americans faced the daunting task of reuniting their own country torn apart by participation in a politically divisive and brutal conflict halfway around the world. The American public had become polarized in a way that it had not been since the Civil War. This letter, written in April 1973 by Senator Edward Kennedy, discusses the need to care for those who served in Southeast Asia and to forgive those who “refused induction” for moral reasons so “that the nation can turn its attention to reconciliation and healing the wounds and bitterness created by this long and costly conflict.” Although the question of amnesty occupies more than half of this letter, Kennedy made it clear that caring for America’s servicemen was his top priority: But the first and immediate task is to care for the addict, the jobless and the wounded veterans home from Southeast Asia. It is our nation’s responsibility to help them right now. And only after we can insure that they are given every opportunity to rebuild their lives, can we then seek the answers to amnesty with the ultimate goal of restoring to our country the unity which this long and cruel conflict divided. The issue of amnesty was tackled by Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter. On September 16, 1974, President Ford issued a conditional amnesty proclamation for those who had evaded the draft, provided that they reaffirmed their allegiance to the United States and agreed to serve two years in a public service job. In 1977, just one day after his election, President Carter unconditionally pardoned anyone who had avoided the draft. Unfortunately, Kennedy’s hopes for supporting servicemen returning from Southeast Asia were not realized. Many returned home to hostile receptions, limited mental health care, and a public that did not understand or want to understand the horrors servicemen had faced in combat. View all pages of the letter here.

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Date: September 11, 2001

Location: New York City, NY; Arlington, VA; Shanksville, PA

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September 11 Attacks: Facts, Background & Impact | HISTORY

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On September 11, 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

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Date: November 4, 2008

Location: United States

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On November 4, 2008, after a campaign that lasted nearly two years, Americans elected Illinois senator Barack Obama their 44th president. The result was historic, as Obama, a first-term U.S. senator, became, when he was inaugurated on January 20, 2009, the country's first African American president. He also was the first sitting U.S. senator to win election to the presidency since John F. Kennedy in 1960. With the highest voter turnout rate in four decades, Obama and Delaware senator Joe Biden defeated the Republican ticket of Arizona senator John McCain, who sought to become the oldest person elected president to a first term in U.S. history, and Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who attempted to become the first woman vice president in the country's history, winning nearly 53 percent of the vote.

The 24/7 news cycle and the proliferation of blogs as a means of disseminating information (both factual and erroneous) framed the contest as both campaigns attempted to control the narrative. McCain's campaign tried to paint Obama as a naive, inexperienced political lightweight who would sit down with the leaders of anti-American regimes in Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela without preconditions, claimed that he was merely a celebrity with little substance (airing an ad comparing Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton), labeled his ideas socialist (hammering away at Obama's tax policy in particular and pouncing on Obama's comment to "Joe the Plumber" that he would seek "spread the wealth"), and attacked his association with Bill Ayers, who had cofounded the Weathermen, a group that carried out bombings in the 1960s. Ayers, in 2008 a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago-and constantly called an "unrepentant domestic terrorist" by the McCain campaign-lived a few blocks from Obama in Chicago, contributed to his reelection campaign for the Illinois Senate, and served on an antipoverty board with Obama from 1999 to 2002. Obama downplayed his acquaintance with Ayers and denounced Ayers's activities as "detestable" but was quick to note that these activities had occurred 40 years ago when the candidate was eight years old. In addition, on the basis of e-mails and other assertions never proved, a small but still significant percentage of the public erroneously believed Obama (a practicing Christian) to be a Muslim. To defend against the attacks, Obama's campaign took the unprecedented step of establishing a Web site, "Fight the Smears," to "fight back against 'hateful,' 'vicious,' and 'desperate' robocalls and mailers." In turn, Obama's campaign attempted to cast doubt on McCain's maverick persona and diminish his appeal to independent voters by tying him at every opportunity to Pres. George W. Bush, whose popularity was among the lowest of any modern president, and broadcasting ads that showed the two in embrace and often repeating that McCain voted with the Bush administration 90 percent of the time. The Obama campaign also sought to frame McCain as "erratic," a charge that was often repeated and that some alleged was an oblique reference to McCain's age, as he would be the oldest person ever to be inaugurated to a first term as president.

The fall campaign was also conducted against the backdrop of a financial crisis that gripped the country in September, when world markets suffered heavy losses, severely hitting the retirement savings of many Americans and pushing the economy to the top of voters' concerns, far outdistancing the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism. From September 19 to October 10, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 26 percent, from 11,388 to 8,451. At the same time, there was a severe contraction of liquidity in credit markets worldwide, caused in part by the subprime mortgage crisis, which resulted in the U.S. government's providing emergency loans to several American firms and the bankruptcy or sale of several major financial institutions. The U.S. economic and political establishment reacted by passing (after an unsuccessful first attempt) the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, which sought to prevent further collapse and to bailout the economy.

The effect of the economic crisis was dramatic, turning a small McCain-Palin lead in the polls in early September into a steady Obama-Biden lead. Obama's lead was further supported by his performance in the three presidential debates, with polls indicating that he was the winner of all three. In both the debates and his response to the financial crisis, Obama scored points with the public for his steadiness and coolness (characterized as aloofness by his critics). Whereas McCain announced the suspension of his campaign for a few days in September to return to Washington, D.C., to address the financial crisis and suggested that the first debate be postponed, Obama played more of a behind-the-scenes role and insisted that the debate take place, saying "It is going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once." Obama was also aided by his decision to opt out of the federal financing system, which would have limited his campaign to $84 million in spending. The McCain campaign criticized this decision, citing a questionnaire Obama filled out in 2007 in which he pledged to stay within the public financing system; however, Obama defended the decision, arguing that in the same document he called for a plan that would require "both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election" and that if he won the Democratic nomination he would "aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election." The Obama campaign's decision paid off, as it attracted more than three million donors and raised an astounding $150 million in the month of September alone, enabling the campaign to outspend the McCain campaign by significant margins in the battleground states and to purchase 30 minutes of prime-time television six days prior to the election (more than 33 million Americans watched the Obama infomercial).

The campaign generated enormous enthusiasm, with millions of new registrants joining the voting rolls (though the McCain campaign alleged that many of these were registered illegally, after allegations surfaced that several employees hired by ACORN, an interest group that lobbies on behalf of lower-income families, had submitted falsified registrations). McCain hosted numerous townhall meetings (a format in which he excelled) throughout the country, in which attendees could question the candidate; however, some of these meetings came under media scrutiny when some audience members became heated in their criticism of Obama. Obama rallies consistently attracted large crowds-including some 100,000 at a rally in St. Louis, Mo., in mid-October-and tens of thousands often came out to see Palin on the stump (the campaign had provided only limited access to Palin for the media). Although some commentators, including conservative ones, questioned her readiness for the vice presidency and presidency, she proved enormously popular: a record 70 million Americans tuned into the vice presidential debate, and her appearance on Saturday Night Live, whose Tina Fey had lampooned her several times previously, drew the show's highest ratings for 14 years.

The 2008 primary campaign was also historic. On the Democratic side, the field narrowed quickly to pit Barack Obama against Hillary Clinton. Both candidates were seeking to become presidential "firsts"-Obama the first African American president and Clinton the first woman president. A sometimes bitter contest between Obama and Clinton produced the narrowest of victories for Obama. The Republican campaign produced a surprising winner, John McCain. Many pundits had written off McCain during the summer of 2007, as his campaign was faltering, while many others had anointed Rudy Giuliani as the front-runner. But Giuliani failed to capture a single state in the primaries, and McCain went on to defeat strong challenges from Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee easily.

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united states presidential election of 2008

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United States Presidential Election of 2008 | Obama, McCain & Issues

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On November 4, 2008, after a campaign that lasted nearly two years, Americans elected Illinois senator Barack Obama their 44th president. The result was historic, as Obama, a first-term U.S. senator, became, when he was inaugurated on January 20, 2009, the country's first African American

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Date: March 11, 2020

Location: Worldwide / United States

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The World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020, has declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic ( 1).

At a news briefing, WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted that over the past 2 weeks, the number of cases outside China increased 13-fold and the number of countries with cases increased threefold. Further increases are expected. He said that the WHO is "deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction," and he called on countries to take action now to contain the virus. "We should double down," he said. "We should be more aggressive."

Among the WHO's current recommendations, people with mild respiratory symptoms should be encouraged to isolate themselves, and social distancing is emphasized and these recommendations apply even to countries with no reported cases ( 2).

Separately, in JAMA, researchers report that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was most often detected in respiratory samples from patients in China. However, live virus was also found in feces. They conclude: "Transmission of the virus by respiratory and extrarespiratory routes may help explain the rapid spread of disease."( 3).

COVID-19 is a novel disease with an incompletely described clinical course, especially for children. In a recente report W. Liu et al described that the virus causing Covid-19 was detected early in the epidemic in 6 (1.6%) out of 366 children (≤16 years of age) hospitalized because of respiratory infections at Tongji Hospital, around Wuhan. All these six children had previously been completely healthy and their clinical characteristics at admission included high fever (>39°C) cough and vomiting (only in four). Four of the six patients had pneumonia, and only one required intensive care. All patients were treated with antiviral agents, antibiotic agents, and supportive therapies, and recovered after a median 7.5 days of hospitalization. ( 4).

Risk factors for severe illness remain uncertain (although older age and comorbidity have emerged as likely important factors), the safety of supportive care strategies such as oxygen by high-flow nasal cannula and noninvasive ventilation are unclear, and the risk of mortality, even among critically ill patients, is uncertain. There are no proven effective specific treatment strategies, and the risk-benefit ratio for commonly used treatments such as corticosteroids is unclear ( 3, 5).

Septic shock and specific organ dysfunction such as acute kidney injury appear to occur in a significant proportion of patients with COVID-19-related critical illness and are associated with increasing mortality, with management recommendations following available evidence-based guidelines ( 3).

Novel COVID-19 "can often present as a common cold-like illness," wrote Roman Wöelfel et al. ( 6). They report data from a study concerning nine young- to middle-aged adults in Germany who developed COVID-19 after close contact with a known case. All had generally mild clinical courses; seven had upper respiratory tract disease, and two had limited involvement of the lower respiratory tract. Pharyngeal virus shedding was high during the first week of symptoms, peaking on day 4. Additionally, sputum viral shedding persisted after symptom resolution. The German researchers say the current case definition for COVID-19, which emphasizes lower respiratory tract disease, may need to be adjusted( 6). But they considered only young and "normal" subjecta whereas the story is different in frail comorbid older patients, in whom COVID 19 may precipitate an insterstitial pneumonia, with severe respiratory failure and death ( 3).

High level of attention should be paid to comorbidities in the treatment of COVID-19. In the literature, COVID-19 is characterised by the symptoms of viral pneumonia such as fever, fatigue, dry cough, and lymphopenia. Many of the older patients who become severely ill have evidence of underlying illness such as cardiovascular disease, liver disease, kidney disease, or malignant tumours. These patients often die of their original comorbidities. They die "with COVID", but were extremely frail and we therefore need to accurately evaluate all original comorbidities.

In addition to the risk of group transmission of an infectious disease, we should pay full attention to the treatment of the original comorbidities of the individual while treating pneumonia, especially in older patients with serious comorbid conditions and polipharmacy. Not only capable of causing pneumonia, COVID-19 may also cause damage to other organs such as the heart, the liver, and the kidneys, as well as to organ systems such as the blood and the immune system. Patients die of multiple organ failure, shock, acute respiratory distress syndrome, heart failure, arrhythmias, and renal failure ( 5, 6).

What we know about COVID 19?

In December 2019, a cluster of severe pneumonia cases of unknown cause was reported in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. The initial cluster was epidemiologically linked to a seafood wholesale market in Wuhan, although many of the initial 41 cases were later reported to have no known exposure to the market ( 7).

A novel strain of coronavirus belonging to the same family of viruses that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), as well as the 4 human coronaviruses associated with the common cold, was subsequently isolated from lower respiratory tract samples of 4 cases on 7 January 2020.

On 30 January 2020, the WHO declared that the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, and more than 80, 000 confirmed cases had been reported worldwide as of 28 February 2020 ( 8). On 31 January 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that all citizens returning from Hubei province, China, would be subject to mandatory quarantine for up to 14 days. But from China COVID 19 arrived to many other countries. Rothe C et al reported a case of a 33-year-old otherwise healthy German businessman :she became ill with a sore throat, chills, and myalgias on January 24, 2020 ( 9). The following day, a fever of 39.1°C developed, along with a productive cough. By the evening of the next day, he started feeling better and went back to work on January 27. Before the onset of symptoms, he had attended meetings with a Chinese business partner at his company near Munich on January 20 and 21. The business partner, a Shanghai resident, had visited Germany between January 19 and 22. During her stay, she had been well with no signs or symptoms of infection but had become ill on her flight back to China, where she tested positive for 2019-nCoV on January 26.

This case of 2019-nCoV infection was diagnosed in Germany and transmitted outside Asia. However, it is notable that the infection appears to have been transmitted during the incubation period of the index patient, in whom the illness was brief and nonspecific. The fact that asymptomatic persons are potential sources of 2019-nCoV infection may warrant a reassessment of transmission dynamics of the current outbreak ( 9).

Our current understanding of the incubation period for COVID-19 is limited. An early analysis based on 88 confirmed cases in Chinese provinces outside Wuhan, using data on known travel to and from Wuhan to estimate the exposure interval, indicated a mean incubation period of 6.4 days (95% CI, 5.6 to 7.7 days), with a range of 2.1 to 11.1 days. Another analysis based on 158 confirmed cases outside Wuhan estimated a median incubation period of 5.0 days (CI, 4.4 to 5.6 days), with a range of 2 to 14 days. These estimates are generally consistent with estimates from 10 confirmed cases in China (mean incubation period, 5.2 days [CI, 4.1 to 7.0 days] and from clinical reports of a familial cluster of COVID-19 in which symptom onset occurred 3 to 6 days after assumed exposure in Wuhan ( 10- 12).

The incubation period can inform several important public health activities for infectious diseases, including active monitoring, surveillance, control, and modeling. Active monitoring requires potentially exposed persons to contact local health authorities to report their health status every day. Understanding the length of active monitoring needed to limit the risk for missing infections is necessary for health departments to effectively use resources. A recent paper provides additional evidence for a median incubation period for COVID-19 of approximately 5 days ( 13). Lauer et al suggest that 101 out of every 10 000 cases will develop symptoms after 14 days of active monitoring or quarantinen ( 13). Whether this rate is acceptable depends on the expected risk for infection in the population being monitored and considered judgment about the cost of missing cases. Combining these judgments with the estimates presented here can help public health officials to set rational and evidence-based COVID-19 control policies. Note that the proportion of mild cases detected has increased as surveillance and monitoring systems have been strengthened. The incubation period for these severe cases may differ from that of less severe or subclinical infections and is not typically an applicable measure for those with asymptomatic infections

In conclusion, in a very short period health care systems and society have been severely challenged by yet another emerging virus. Preventing transmission and slowing the rate of new infections are the primary goals; however, the concern of COVID-19 causing critical illness and death is at the core of public anxiety. The critical care community has enormous experience in treating severe acute respiratory infections every year, often from uncertain causes. The care of severely ill patients, in particular older persons with COVID-19 must be grounded in this evidence base and, in parallel, ensure that learning from each patient could be of great importance to care all population,

Appendix

Avoid all non-essential travel

Conflict of interest:

The author declares that he has no commercial associations (e.g. consultancies, stock ownership, equity interest, patent/licensing arrangement etc.) that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article

References

1. WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID19 -March 2020 [Google Scholar]

2. CIDRAP-Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. 11 March 2020 [Google Scholar]

3. Srinivas M, Gomersall CD, Fowler R. Critically Ill Patients With COVID-19 JAMA. Published online. March 11, 2020 doi: 10.1001/jama.2020.3633. doi:10.1001/JAMA.2020.3633. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

6. Woelfel R, Corman VM, Guggemos W, et al. Clinical presentation and virological assessment of hospitalized cases of coronavirus disease 2019 in a travel-associated transmission cluster. medRXiv. March,8, 2020 [Google Scholar]

8. World Health Organization. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): Situation Report - 38. 27 February 2020 Accessed at www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200227-sitrep-38-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=9f98940c_2. on 28 February 2020. [Google Scholar]

13. Lauer SA, Grantz KH, et al. The Incubation Period of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) From Publicly Reported Confirmed Cases: Estimation and Application. Ann Intern Med. 2020 doi: 10.7326/M20-0504. [Epub ahead of print 10 March 2020]. doi: https://doi.org/10.7326/M20-0504 . [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020, has declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic ( 1). At a news briefing, WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted that over the past 2 weeks, the number of cases outside China increased 13-fold and the number of countries with cases increased threefold.