Politique Opinion

In 1933, during the Great Depression, the Emergency Banking Act  (officially named the Emergency Banking Relief Act) was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The act allowed a plan that would close down insolvent banks and reorganize and reopen those banks strong enough to survive.

The Act was introduced during a joint session of Congress and was passed the same evening amid an atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty as over 100 new Democratic members of Congress swept into power.

These democrats were determined to take big steps to address banking failures and other economic malaise. (Seems like history is repeating itself a little bit here!)

The sense of urgency was such that the act was passed with only a single copy available on the floor and most legislators voted on it without reading it. Good work gentleman!

On February 3, 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the United States Constitution is sworn in.

It prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen’s “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” (i.e., slavery).

This a pretty cool thing…

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

It’s Groundhog Day and, again, this might not be about politics but who really wants to hear about national debt and all that kind of boring stuff.

Instead let’s talk about Groundhog Day. It’s celebrated every 2nd of February in Canada and the United States – they even made a movie about it with Bill Murray. According to the folklore, if the little furry groundhog doesn’t see his shadow it will head back down the hole meaning that winter will still be over. If he does see his shadow there will be 6 more weeks of winter.

This isn’t exactly political in nature but it did happen on this day in 2003.

It was the second Space Shuttle Disaster and the first shuttle lost on landing. There was shock around the world over the tragedy.

Space Shuttle Columbia was launched on January 16th, 2003 at 9.39am. Columbia was on a 16-day science research mission in Earth orbit which performed experiments in space.

It was the 113th mission. Columbia was the oldest space shuttle in the fleet of four. It was the first space shuttle to be launched in Earth orbit in 1981.

On January 30, 1985, Richard Lawrence attempts to shoot president Andrew Jackson, but fails and is subdued by a crowd, including several congressmen.

This is quite the story:

Lawrence worked as a painter and there is speculation that exposure to the chemicals in his paints may have contributed to his derangements. By the early 1830s he was unemployed and had succumbed to the delusion that he was King Richard III of England. His personality changed dramatically around this point. He was previously conservatively dressed, but now he dressed flamboyantly, and grew a moustache. He gave up his job, saying that he had no need to work as the American government owed him a large sum of money but that President Andrew Jackson was keeping him from receiving it. He also said that when he received the money, he could take up his rightful place as King of England.

Lawrence also blamed Jackson for killing his father in 1832, despite the fact that Lawrence’s father had died nine years earlier and had never been to the United States. This, among I’m sure a whole slew of others things was why Lawerence tried to kill Andrew Jackson.

No this isn’t something on Star Trek. This is a real treaty that was signed on January 29, 1967.

The Outer Space Treaty represents the basic legal framework of international space law. Among its principles, it bars States Parties to the Treaty from placing nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in orbit of Earth, installing them on the Moon or any other celestial body, or to otherwise station them in outer space. It exclusively limits the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes and expressly prohibits their use for testing weapons of any kind, conducting military maneuvers, or establishing military bases, installations, and fortifications (Art.IV). However, the Treaty does not prohibit the placement of conventional weapons in orbit.

PS. Check out this guy trying to sell the moon.

At the time, this was big news…

The Lewinsky Scandal was a political sex scandal emerging from a sexual relationship between United States President Bill Clinton and a 22-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The news of this extra-marital affair and the resulting investigation eventually led to the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal on all impeachment charges (of perjury and obstruction of justice) in a 21-day Senate trial.

The League was an organization that was founded after the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919–1920. It later became the United Nations. At its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. The League’s primary goals as stated in its Covenant included preventing war through collective security, disarmament, and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. Other goals in this and related treaties included labor conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, trafficking in persons and drugs, arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe^.

January 2008 was an especially volatile month in world stock markets, with a surge in implied volatility measurements of the US-based S&P 500 index, and a sharp decrease in non-U.S. stock market prices on Monday, January 21, 2008 (continuing to a lesser extent in some markets on January 22). Some headline writers and a general news columnist called January 21 “Black Monday” and referred to a “global shares crash,” though the effects were quite different in different markets.

The effects of these events were also felt on the Shanghai Composite Index in China which lost 5.14 percent, most of this on financial stocks such as Ping An Insurance and China Life which lost 10 and 8.76 percent respectively. Investors worried about the effect of a recession in the US economy would have on the Chinese economy. Citigroup estimates due to the number of exports from China to America a one percent drop in US economic growth would lead to a 1.3 percent drop in China’s growth rate.

Since 1933, Inauguration Day has occurred on January 20 thanks to the 1933 ratification of the Twentieth Amendment which changed the date.

The inauguration of the President of the United States occurs upon the commencement of a new term of a President of the United States.

The only inauguration element mandated by the United States Constitution is that the President make an oath or affirmation before that person can “enter on the Execution” of the office of the presidency. However, over the years, various traditions have arisen that have expanded the inauguration from a simple oath-taking ceremony to a day-long event, including parades, speeches, and balls.

This day, now known as Inauguration Day, was on March 4 from 1793 until 1933.