On March 12, 1933,

President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the first of his 30 radio "fireside chats," telling Americans what was being done to deal with the nation's economic crisis.

In 1664,

England's King Charles II granted an area of land in present-day North America known as New Netherland to his brother James, the Duke of York.

In 1864,

Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to the rank of general-in-chief of the Union armies in the Civil War by President Abraham Lincoln.