ELEANOR ROOSEVELT’S LIFE AND MAJOR DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN EVENTS DURING THAT TIME
1884 Eleanor is born on October 11 in New York City.
1892 Eleanor’s mother, Anna, dies, leaving behind three young children.
1893 Eleanor’s brother, Elliott Jr., dies.
1894 Eleanor’s father, Elliott Sr., commits suicide.
1899 Eleanor embarks on her education at the Allenswood Academy in England.
1901 Vice President Theodore Roosevelt becomes president after President William McKinley is assassinated.
1902 Eleanor returns from Allenswood to make her debut in New York society.
1903 The Wright brothers make their first powered flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
1905 Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt are married on March 17, with President Theodore Roosevelt officiating.
1906 Daughter, Anna, is born.
1907 Son James is born.
1908 Henry Ford introduces the Model T automobile.
1909 Son Franklin Jr. is born in March but dies in November.
1909 The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, was founded by W. E. B. Du Bois.
1910 The Roosevelt family moves to Albany, the capital of New York, after Franklin is elected to the state senate.
1912 Woodrow Wilson is elected president.
1913 The Roosevelt family moves to Washington, D.C., after Franklin is appointed assistant secretary of the navy by President Woodrow Wilson.
1914 Son, also named Franklin Jr., is born.
1916 Son John is born.
1916 Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first woman elected to the United States Congress.
1917 On April 6, the United States declares war on Germany, beginning U.S. involvement in World War I.
1918 Eleanor begins work for the American Red Cross.
1918 Eleanor discovers Franklin’s affair with Lucy Mercer.
1918 World War I ends on November 11.
1920 Franklin runs as vice president on the Democratic ticket. After he loses, he works as a lawyer in New York.
1920 Women are granted the right to vote upon ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
1920 Warren G. Harding is elected president.
1920 Commercial radio begins broadcasting in the United States.
1921 While vacationing at the family’s summer home in Canada, Franklin is stricken with polio.
1922 For the next five years, Eleanor is an active participant in progressive organizations such as the Women’s Trade Union League, the League of Women Voters, and Women’s Division of the New York State Democratic Committee.
1923 Warren G. Harding dies of a heart attack, and Vice President Calvin Coolidge becomes president.
1924 J. Edgar Hoover is appointed to head the FBI.
1926 The radio network NBC begins, followed by CBS the next year.
1927 Eleanor, along with her friend Marion Dickerman, buys the Todhunter School in New York City and begins teaching there.
1927 Charles Lindbergh is the first person to fly nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean.
1927 The first “talking picture,” The Jazz Singer, is released.
1928 Franklin is elected governor of New York. Eleanor moves to Albany and assists her husband.
1928 Herbert Hoover is elected president.
1929 The stock market crashes, plunging the country into the Great Depression.
1932 Amelia Earhart flies solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
1932 Franklin is elected president of the United States.
1933 Eleanor assumes the role of First Lady. She takes on a number of projects, including advocating for the Arthurdale community, traveling throughout the country to observe the effect and efficiency of New Deal programs, and writing a newspaper column and books.
1933 Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany.
1934 Eleanor begins advocating for the African American community.
1936 Franklin is elected to his second term as president.
1939 Germany’s invasion of Poland starts World War II in Europe.
1939 At the New York World’s Fair, Franklin speaks via an invention new to most people, television.
1940 The Germans march through Europe continues.
1940 Franklin wins an unprecedented third term as president.
1941 Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, triggering the U.S. entry into World War II, fighting against Japan, Germany, and Italy.
1941-1945 World War II rages with battles throughout the world, and the Holocaust, the systematic murder of Jews and others, moves into high gear.
1941-1945 Eleanor spends the war years visiting the troops and promoting the Tuskegee Airmen, an African American unit of the U.S. Army Air Corps.
1944 Franklin wins a fourth term as president.
1945 Franklin dies in Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12.
1945 Germany surrenders on May 7, ending the war in Europe.
1945 The United States drops atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan announces its surrender on August 15, 1945.
1945 President Harry S. Truman appoints Eleanor to the newly formed United Nations.
1947 Eleanor becomes chair of the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations, which issues a Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower is elected president of the United States.
1952-1957 Eleanor travels the world. Her visits include Israel, India, Thailand, and the U.S.S.R.
1960 John F. Kennedy is elected president.
1962 Eleanor dies of heart failure after contracting aplastic anemia and tuberculosis of the bone marrow.