900 caricatures of noted Victorian and Edwardian personages from British society magazine Vanity Fair which ran from 1868 to 1914. Among those pictured are Oscar Wilde, Benjamin Disraeli, Herman Melville, Alfred Dreyfus, Teddy Roosevelt, Gustave Eiffel and Charles Boycott (from whose name comes the word). A couple are mildly not safe for work, a few quite racist, as was the prevalent attitude of the time, and at least one is both.
posted on Jul 21, 2008 - View this thread

The Year of Roosevelt Franklin. High on the list of forgotten Sesame Street characters is one Roosevelt Franklin, a reddish purple muppet with pointed black hair and a distinctly hep style of speech (provided by the late Matt Robinson, the show's original Gordon). Despite Roosevelt's funky musical sensibilities (demonstrated in an album called My Name is Roosevelt Franklin, later released as The Year of Roosevelt Franklin), the character's classroom behavior was, well, quite frankly, poison. His constant misbehavior in school might have been fun to watch, but was seen as representing a negative stereotype and a bad example, and so it was adieu Franklin.
posted on Jan 30, 2007 - View this thread

During the Great Depression, thousands of young people wrote to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for help. They asked for clothing, money, and other forms of assistance.
posted on Oct 4, 2006 - View this thread

Teenage Hoboes in the Great Depression. During the Great Depression over 250,000 young people left home and began riding freight trains or hitchhiking across America. Most of them were between 16 and 25 years of age. Many finally found work and shelter through the Civilian Conservation Corps, a government relief project that Franklin D. Roosevelt established in 1933 as part of the New Deal. From 1933 to 1942, CCC enrollees built new roads, strung telephone wires, erected fire towers, and planted approximately 3 billion trees. By 1935, the program was providing employment for more than 500,000 young men.
posted on Jul 7, 2006 - View this thread

The presidential campaign of 1912. Historian James Chace talks about the campaign, its spirit of progressive reform, and how the Taft-Roosevelt schism led to the GOP turning right.
posted on Jul 26, 2004 - View this thread

"If you like, give me a ten dollars bill green american, in the letter, because never, I have not seen a ten dollars bill green American and I would like to have one of them"
Your friend, Fidel Castro
[via Mahalanobis]
posted on Jun 24, 2004 - View this thread

Happy Thanksgiving or Is It? In 1939, Franklin Delano Roosevelt responed to pressure from the National Retail Dry Goods Association to move the official date of Thanksgiving back one week to the next-to-last Thursday of the month. FDR hoped that this would enliven the economy by adding one week to the Christmas shopping season, but he received considerable political flak for tampering with what many viewed as a sacred religious holiday. (Thanksgiving is considered sacred even though it only became a national holiday due to lobbying by the editor of a 19th century woman's magazine.) New Deal-era Republicans were especially bothered by the calendar change and one essayist at the American Enterprise Institute still seems to carry a grudge. Congress later resolved the issue by passing a resolution in 1941 that designated Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday of November.
posted on Nov 26, 2002 - View this thread

So I'm watching Dog eat Dog tonight Mostly for the incredibly tasty Brooke Burns. And for the contestant to win, one of the losers had to miss the question "Which 32'd president said 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself?'". Now the guy said he was guessing and answered "Roosevelt", but he didn't clarify, Teddy? or FDR? They said he got it right so the contestant lost. Personally I think a retraction or apology is due.
posted on Jul 29, 2002 - View this thread

By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA. From the website at the Library of Congress, the posters consist of 908 boldly colored and graphically diverse original posters produced from 1936 to 1943 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress's collection of more than 900 is the largest. These striking silkscreen, lithograph, and woodcut posters were designed to publicize health and safety programs; cultural programs including art exhibitions, theatrical, and musical performances; travel and tourism; educational programs; and community activities in seventeen states and the District of Columbia. For examples, see a poster on the health dangers of Syphilis and one for the play Alison's House: A Poetic Romance.
posted on Dec 31, 2001 - View this thread