On this day in 1947, President Harry Truman (1884-1972) makes the first-ever televised presidential address from the White House, asking Americans to cut back on their use of grain in order to help starving Europeans.
At the time of Truman’s food-conservation speech, Europe was still recovering from World War II suffering from famine. Truman, the 33rd commander in chief, worried that if the U.S. didn’t provide food aid, his administration’s Marshall Plan for European economic recovery would fall apart. He asked farmers and distillers to reduce grain use and requested that the public voluntarily forgo meat on Tuesdays, eggs and poultry on Thursdays and save a slice of bread each day. The food program was short-lived, as ultimately the Marshall Plan succeeded in helping to spur economic revitalization and growth in Europe.
In 1947, television was still in its infancy and the number of TV sets in U.S. homes only numbered in the thousands (by the early 1950s, millions of Americans owned TVs); most people listened to the radio for news and entertainment. However, although the majority of Americans missed Truman’s TV debut, his speech signaled the start of a powerful and complex relationship between the White House and a medium that would have an enormous impact on the American presidency, from how candidates campaigned for the office to how presidents communicated with their constituents.
Each of Truman’s subsequent White House speeches, including his 1949 inauguration address, was televised. In 1948, Truman was the first presidential candidate to broadcast a paid political ad. Truman pioneered the White House telecast, but it was President Franklin Roosevelt who was the first president to appear on TV–from the World’s Fair in New York City on April 30, 1939. FDR’s speech had an extremely limited TV audience, though, airing only on receivers at the fairgrounds and at Radio City in Manhattan.
Nation of sheep, nation of sheep, the President's ...Not a good day for original Americans:
On this day in 1942, Joseph Stalin, premier and dictator of the Soviet Union, fires off a telegram to the German and Soviet front at Stalingrad, exhorting his forces to victory. “That part of Stalingrad which has been captured must be liberated.”
Stalingrad was a key to capturing the Soviet Union, in many ways as important as capturing Moscow itself. It stood between the old Russia and the new, a center of both rail and river communications, industry and old-world Russian trade. To preserve Stalingrad’s integrity was to preserve Russian civilization past and present. As the Germans reached the Volga, thrust and counterthrust brought the battle to a standstill. Everyone from Russian factory workers to reinforcements of more than 160,000 Soviet soldiers poured into Stalingrad to beat back the German invader. Despite dwindling supplies, such as tanks and troop reserves, Hitler would not relent, convincing himself that the Russians could not hold out for long.
But Stalin appealed not only to Russian patriotism but also to Allied armaments. Requests to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill for aid had not gone unheeded, as five British merchant ships arrived in northern Russia, loaded with supplies
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