Pies: President Franklin Roosevelt created a minor international incident when he claimed he sent a destroyer to the Aleutian

Evidence: 60 • authority: 72

Fala (April 7, 1940 – April 5, 1952), a Scottish Terrier, was the dog of United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt. One of the most famous presidential pets, Fala was taken to many places by Roosevelt. Given to the Roosevelts by a cousin, Fala knew how to perform tricks; the dog and his White House antics were mentioned frequently by the media and often referenced by Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor. Fala outlived Roosevelt by seven years and was buried near him. A statue of Fala beside Roosevelt is featured in Washington, D.C.'s Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, the only presidential pet so honored. Another statue of Fala has been placed at Puerto Rico's "Paseo de los Presidentes" in S…

Evidence: 60 • authority: 72

Fala (April 7, 1940 – April 5, 1952), a Scottish Terrier, was the dog of United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt. As a presidential pet, Fala was taken to many places by Roosevelt. Given to the Roosevelts by a cousin, Fala knew how to perform tricks; the dog and his White House antics were mentioned frequently by the media and often referenced by Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor. Fala outlived Roosevelt by seven years and was buried near him. A statue of Fala beside Roosevelt is featured in Washington, D.C.'s Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, the only presidential pet so honored. Another statue of Fala has been placed at Puerto Rico's "Paseo de los Presidentes" in San Juan.

Evidence: 49 • authority: 72

Marguerite Alice "Missy" LeHand (September 13, 1896 – July 31, 1944) was a private secretary to U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt for 21 years. According to LeHand's biographer Kathryn Smith in The Gatekeeper, she eventually functioned as White House Chief of Staff, the first woman in American history to do so. Born into a blue collar, Irish-American family in upstate New York, LeHand studied secretarial science in high school, took a series of clerical jobs, and began to work for the Franklin Roosevelt 1920 vice presidential campaign in New York. Following the Democrats' defeat, FDR's wife, Eleanor, invited her to join the family at their home in Hyde Park, New York, to clean up the cam…

Evidence: 49 • authority: 88

<i>The Historical Presidency</i>: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Destroyer Deal: Normalizing Prerogative Power. In the aftermath of the imperial presidency, some historians and political scientists developed a revisionist critique of Franklin D. Roosevelt's destroyer deal, criticizing his claim and exercise of prerogative power to unilaterally exchange destroyers for leasing rights to British bases in the Western Hemisphere. They argued that the deal was a violation of international law, that it went beyond the Constitution, that it violated neutrality laws passed by Congress, that it took advantage of the British in a time of maximum peril. The purpose of this article is to examine two of t…

Evidence: 44 • authority: 72

Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd (née Lucy Page Mercer; April 26, 1891 – July 31, 1948) was an American woman who sustained a long affair with US president Franklin D. Roosevelt. Born to formerly rich parents, Mercer became secretary to Eleanor Roosevelt in 1914 and began an extensive affair with Franklin shortly thereafter. When Eleanor discovered the affair in 1918, she offered Franklin a divorce; but Franklin instead chose to separate from Mercer to preserve his political career. After dismissal from the Roosevelt household, Mercer married New York socialite Winthrop Rutherfurd, but maintained contact with Franklin Roosevelt. Rutherfurd died in 1944, and Franklin began seeing Mercer again, through…

Evidence: 39 • authority: 72

The first term of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt began on March 4, 1933, when he was inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States, and the second term of his presidency ended on January 20, 1941, with his inauguration to a third term. Roosevelt, the Democratic governor of New York, took office after defeating incumbent president Herbert Hoover, his Republican opponent in the 1932 presidential election. Roosevelt led the implementation of the New Deal, a series of programs designed to provide relief, recovery, and reform to Americans and the American economy during the Great Depression. He also presided over a realignment that made his New Deal coalition of labor unions, b…

Evidence: 39 • authority: 72

The Checkers speech or Fund speech was an address made on September 23, 1952, by then-Senator Richard Nixon, six weeks before the 1952 United States presidential election in which he was the Republican nominee for Vice President. Nixon had been accused of improprieties relating to a fund established by his backers to reimburse him for his political expenses. His place was in doubt on the Republican ticket, so he flew to Los Angeles and delivered a half-hour television address in which he defended himself, attacked his opponents, and urged the audience to contact the Republican National Committee (RNC) to tell them whether he should remain on the ticket. During the speech, he stated that he…

Evidence: 34 • authority: 72

March of Dimes is an American nonprofit organization that works to improve the health of mothers and babies. The organization was founded by US president Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938, as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, to combat polio. The name "March of Dimes" was coined by Eddie Cantor as a pun on the newsreel series The March of Time. After funding Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, the organization expanded its focus to the prevention of birth defects and infant mortality. In 2005, as preterm birth emerged as the leading cause of death for children worldwide, research and prevention of premature birth became the organization's primary focus.

Evidence: — • authority: 38