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 Sept. 3, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson began a tour across the U.S. to promote American membership in the League of Nations, an international body that he hoped would help to solve international conflicts and prevent another bloody conflict like World War I. The war illustrated to Wilson the unavoidable relationship between international stability and American national security. In January 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference that ended World War I, Wilson urged leaders from France, Great Britain and Italy to come together with leaders of other nations to draft a Covenant of League of Nations. The plan was met with stiff opposition from the Republican majority in Congress, which was wary of the international covenant’s vague language and legal loopholes regarding America’s sovereignty. As such the body refused to adopt the agreement and did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles. Wilson embarked on his tour across the country to sell the idea directly to the American people, arguing that isolationism did not work. The tour encompassed 8,000 miles in 22 days, during which the president experienced constant headaches, collapsed from exhaustion and suffered a near-fatal stroke. After World War II the League was replaced by an even larger institution which America did join — the United Nations.
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