Tagged: american history

    On Friday, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York kicked off their "100 Days" Countdown to the public opening of the Roosevelt Library's new permanent museum exhibits on June 30th. Today marks 97 days.

These exhibits will tell the story of the Roosevelt presidency beginning in the depths of the Great Depression and continuing through the New Deal years and World War II with an emphasis on both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s relationship with the American people. Special interactives, immersive audio‐visual theaters, and rarely seen artifacts will convey the dramatic story of the Roosevelt era as the Roosevelt Library brings a New Deal to a New Generation.

To help us countdown, we welcome Lynn Bassanese, Director of the FDR Presidential Library and Museum and Felica Wong, President and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute.

  On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly, the crusading young female reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s World newspaper, left New York City by steamship on a quest to break the record for the fastest trip around the world.

Also departing from New York that day—and heading in the opposite direction by train—was a young journalist from The Cosmopolitan magazine, Elizabeth Bisland. Each woman was determined to outdo Jules Verne’s fictional hero Phileas Fogg and circle the globe in less than eighty days. The dramatic race that ensued would span twenty-eight thousand miles, captivate the nation, and change both competitors’ lives forever.

    Baseball in the 1930s was more than a national pastime; it was a cultural touchstone that galvanized communities and gave a struggling country its heroes despite the woes of the Depression. Hank Greenberg, one of the most exciting sluggers in baseball history, gave the people of Detroit a reason to be proud.

But America was facing more than economic hardship. With the Nazis gaining power across Europe, political and social tensions were approaching a boiling point. As one of the few Jewish athletes competing nationally, Greenberg became not only an iconic ball player, but also an important and sometimes controversial symbol of Jewish identity and the American immigrant experience.

    In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. rounded up hundreds of suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and around the world. Many ended up at a special military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.