48 Fun Facts About Franklin D. Roosevelt

What do presidents today call the retreat FDR named Shangri-La?

Camp David. President Eisenhower renamed it in 1953, honouring his grandson David.

After FDR won four elections, which constitutional amendment barred anyone from being elected president more than twice?

The 22nd Amendment. It wrote into law the two-term tradition set by George Washington, which FDR broke by running for a third term in 1940.

In which New York town was Roosevelt born and later buried?

Hyde Park. After he died in 1945, thousands lined the tracks as a funeral train carried him home to be buried in the Springwood rose garden.

In a 1944 speech, FDR mocked a false story that the Navy sent a destroyer back to fetch which companion?

His dog Fala. FDR joked that he and his family didn't resent the attacks, but Fala did.

Which student newspaper did Roosevelt edit as an undergraduate?

The Harvard Crimson. He stayed at Harvard an extra year for graduate courses, largely so he could keep working on the paper.

Who gave away the bride at Franklin and Eleanor's 1905 wedding?

Theodore Roosevelt. Eleanor was his niece, and he stood in for her father, his younger brother Elliott, who had died in 1894.

In his 1933 inaugural address, FDR said the only thing Americans had to fear was what?

Fear itself. Later in the address he warned that if Congress failed to act, he would ask for broad executive power to wage war against the emergency.

Which of Eleanor's social secretaries had a long affair with FDR and was with him when he died?

Lucy Mercer. After Eleanor discovered the affair in 1918, FDR promised never to see Lucy again, then quietly resumed seeing her.

Roosevelt began his political career in 1910 by winning election to which body?

New York State Senate. The young Democrat won in a Dutchess County district that was traditionally dominated by Republicans.

As a state senator, Roosevelt led the 'Insurgents' against which political machine?

Tammany Hall. The machine essentially ran New York City's Democratic Party, and in 1914 FDR failed to win his party's nomination for the US Senate.

Under President Wilson, Roosevelt held which post from 1913 to 1920?

Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He pushed so hard for a 'big Navy' and for entering World War I that he was at odds with the Wilson administration's neutrality.

Roosevelt was the vice-presidential running mate of which Democratic nominee in 1920?

James M. Cox. Popular feeling against Wilson's plan to join the League of Nations helped Warren Harding beat their ticket by a wide margin.

Before the 1920 ticket, Roosevelt approached which businessman about running for president as a Democrat?

Hoover declared himself a Republican instead, and Roosevelt beat him in a landslide twelve years later.

Where was FDR vacationing in August 1921 when he fell ill with the disease that paralysed his legs?

Campobello Island. After a plunge into cold sea water and an active day, he came down with chills and fever, and then paralysis.

In which Georgia town did FDR set up a rehabilitation centre for polio patients?

Warm Springs. He first went there hoping its mineral waters would heal him, and he died at his cottage there in April 1945.

What nickname did FDR's 1932 campaign advisers, mostly Columbia University professors, earn?

The Brain Trust. Members such as Raymond Moley went on to help shape the policies of the First New Deal.

Roosevelt clashed with which powerful planner while chairing the Taconic State Park Commission?

The two men's contentious relationship continued for the rest of their careers.

What name did FDR give the coalition of 26 Allied nations that pledged in 1942 to defeat the Axis?

The United Nations. FDR hoped the wartime alliance would outlast the war as a body for world peace, and the UN was founded in 1945.

What name was given to FDR's informal radio addresses to the nation?

Fireside chats. His first as president explained the banking crisis, and Americans returned about $1 billion to banks within weeks.

How did FDR break tradition after his 1932 nomination?

Flying to Chicago to accept it in person. The flight was meant to show voters that polio had not left him too frail to lead.

Who was Roosevelt's running mate in 1932 and 1936?

John Nance Garner. FDR clinched the 1932 nomination only after promising the vice presidency to Garner, whose Texas delegates then backed him.

Who became the first woman to hold a US cabinet post when Roosevelt named her Secretary of Labor?

Frances Perkins. She chaired the committee that shaped the Social Security Act and served as Labor Secretary for all twelve years of FDR's presidency.

Who was killed in the February 1933 assassination attempt on president-elect Roosevelt in Florida?

Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak. Gunman Giuseppe Zangara, first sentenced to 80 years in prison, was retried after Cermak died and executed that March.

What did FDR declare shortly after his 1933 inauguration to stop runs on the banks?

A national bank holiday. When stock trading resumed after it, the Dow jumped about 15 percent in a single day.

In March 1933, FDR signed a law letting Americans legally buy which drink again?

Beer. April 7, 1933, the day legal sales resumed, is now celebrated every year as National Beer Day.

Which New Deal agency sent young unemployed men to rural work camps?

Civilian Conservation Corps. Its young men planted trees and built trails, earning $30 a month but sending $25 of it home to their families.

What did Executive Order 6102 require Americans to turn in to the Federal Reserve in 1933?

Privately held gold. In 1934 the government raised gold's official price from $20.67 to $35 an ounce, devaluing the dollar.

Which New Deal act created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation?

Glass-Steagall Act. Representative Steagall backed Senator Glass's bank reforms only once federal deposit insurance was added.

Roosevelt insisted Social Security be funded by payroll taxes so no politician could ever do what?

Scrap the programme. FDR said the contributions gave workers a 'legal, moral, and political right' to their benefits, so 'no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.'

Which New Deal agency, led by Harry Hopkins, gave millions of jobless Americans paid jobs instead of the dole?

Works Progress Administration. Besides building schools, hospitals and airports, it paid writers, actors and musicians for cultural projects.

Which two states did Roosevelt fail to carry in his 1936 landslide?

Maine and Vermont. The landslide sealed a New Deal coalition, including union members and Black voters, that powered Democrats for decades.

FDR's failed 1937 Judicial Procedures Reform Bill is known by what nickname?

Court packing. While Congress debated it, the Supreme Court began upholding New Deal laws, and the plan died that July.

Which 1938 law signed by Roosevelt outlawed child labour and set a federal minimum wage?

Fair Labor Standards Act. The justices upheld it in 1941, overruling a 1918 decision that had struck down Congress's child-labor law.

Roosevelt's first-term approach of non-intervention in Latin America was known by what name?

Good Neighbor Policy. He withdrew US Marines from Haiti and scrapped the treaty that had given the US a right to intervene in Cuba.

Which 1941 program let FDR send Britain weapons and supplies?

Lend-Lease. Churchill had warned that Britain could no longer pay for American supplies, so the US stopped insisting on payment.

Who was the Republican nominee Roosevelt defeated when he won a third term in 1940?

Wendell Willkie. The Republican nominee had spent most of his career as an active Democrat before switching parties.

Which four freedoms did Roosevelt name in his January 1941 State of the Union address?

Speech, worship, from want and from fear. Norman Rockwell's 1943 paintings of them became the centrepiece of a huge war bond drive.

Which political journalist befriended FDR in 1912 and became his closest political adviser?

Louis Howe. When polio struck, he and Eleanor pushed FDR to stay active in politics throughout his long recovery.

Which word completes FDR's description of December 7, 1941: 'a date which will live in…'?

Infamy. His first typed draft read 'a date which will live in world history', and he changed it by hand.

What term did Roosevelt coin for the major Allied powers he expected to police the postwar world?

He meant the US, the UK, the Soviet Union and China.

At which 1943 conference did Roosevelt meet Stalin for the first time?

Tehran. Britain and the US committed there to invading France in 1944, and Stalin agreed to declare war on Japan once Germany was beaten.

What did FDR's Executive Order 9066 of February 1942 lead to?

Internment of Japanese Americans. The order never named an ethnic group, and in 1988 Congress formally apologised for the incarceration.

Which two scientists' 1939 letter warned Roosevelt about a possible German atomic bomb?

Einstein and Szilard. Economist Alexander Sachs read it to FDR in October 1939, and the president set up a committee on uranium, an early step toward the bomb.

Who replaced Henry Wallace as FDR's running mate in 1944?

Harry S. Truman. He had been vice president for just 82 days when FDR's death made him president in April 1945.

What were Roosevelt's last recorded words, spoken while sitting for a portrait on April 12, 1945?

'I have a terrific headache'. Other accounts give it as 'a terrific pain in the back of my head'; he died hours later of a cerebral haemorrhage.

Which charity did FDR found in 1938 as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis?

March of Dimes. It funded the vaccine research that went on to wipe out polio in the United States.

What name was given to FDR's flurry of lawmaking after he took office in 1933?

The Hundred Days. In the rush, Congress passed his emergency banking bill nearly sight unseen.

Which actor played Roosevelt in the 2012 film about his relationship with his cousin Daisy Suckley?

The film drew on Suckley's private diaries, discovered only after her death.