March 12 Birthday
On March 12, 1933, President Roosevelt delivered the first of what would become thirty "fireside chats" — radio broadcasts addressed directly to the American people. He spoke for thirteen minutes about the banking crisis, explaining why he had closed every bank in the country and what would happen next. The broadcast was heard by an estimated sixty million people — roughly half the population. Roosevelt explained complex banking concepts in simple language, and his calm, confident voice reassured a terrified nation. When the banks reopened the next day, depositors lined up to put their money back in rather than take it out. The fireside chat was a political innovation — no president had spoken to the public this way before. Radio, which had been primarily an entertainment medium, became a tool of governance. The Truman Doctrine was announced on March 12, 1947, when President Truman asked Congress for $400 million in military and economic aid for Greece and Turkey. Both countries were facing communist insurgencies, and Britain, which had been supporting them, could no longer afford to. Truman argued that the United States must "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." The doctrine established the principle of containment — the idea that communism must be resisted wherever it appeared. It shaped American foreign policy for forty-four years, through Korea, Vietnam, and a thousand proxy wars. Truman did not ask whether the "free peoples" the US supported were actually free — many were dictatorships. The doctrine conflated anti-communism with democracy, a confusion that defined the Cold War. Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Scouts on this day in 1912 in Savannah, Georgia. She had met Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, in England and returned to the United States determined to create a similar organization for girls. The first troop had eighteen members. Low was deaf in one ear from an ear infection and had a piece of rice lodged in her other ear from her wedding day — it was there for the rest of her life. She sold her pearls to fund the organization. Today there are 2.5 million Girl Scouts. The cookies were first sold in 1917 by a troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma, as a service project. The cookies are a billion-dollar business now, but the Girl Scouts keep the recipes and the bakers pay a licensing fee. Jack Kerouac, born this day in 1922, wrote On the Road in three weeks on a continuous roll of teletype paper. He typed without stopping, without revision. The scroll was 120 feet long. The book was published in 1957 and defined the Beat Generation. Kerouac was an alcoholic who died at forty-seven, his liver destroyed. He was a conservative Catholic who resented being associated with the counterculture his work helped create. People born on March 12 fall under the zodiac sign of Pisces. The birthstone is Aquamarine and the birth flower is Daffodil. Historical events on March 12 include 1912: Juliette Gordon Low founds the Girl Scouts in Savannah, Georgia, 1933: FDR delivers first fireside chat radio broadcast, 1947: Truman Doctrine announced, pledging US support for nations threatened by communism. Famous people born on March 12 include Jack Kerouac (1922), Liza Minnelli (1946), Mitt Romney (1947).