1978: NOAA announces gender-neutral hurricane naming system
Federal News Network presents a daily update of important moments in the history of the U.S. government.
On Oct. 30, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, determined to keep the U.S. out of the war while helping those allies already mired in it, approved $1 billion in Lend-Lease loans to the Soviet Union. The terms were there would be no interest and repayment did not have to start until five years after the war was over. The Lend-Lease program was devised by Roosevelt and passed by Congress on March 11, 1941. Originally, it was meant to aid Great Britain in its war effort against the Germans by giving the chief executive the power to “sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of” any military resources the president deemed ultimately in the interest of the defense of the U.S. The reasoning was that if a neighbor was successful in defending his home, the security of one’s own home was enhanced. Formal approval to extend the Lend-Lease program to the USSR had to be given by Congress. Anticommunist feeling meant much heated debate, but Congress finally gave its approval to the extension on Nov. 7. After the war, the Lend-Lease program morphed into the Marshall Plan, which allocated funds for the revitalization of “friendly” democratic nations, even if they were former enemies.
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