August 3

This Day in History

Also on This Day

Lead Story
Nautilus travels under North Pole, 1958
American Revolution
Lord Jeffrey Amherst dies, 1797
Automotive
"The Spy Who Loved Me" released, features Lotus Esprit, 1977
Civil War
Union General Thomas F. Meagher is born in Ireland, 1823
Cold War
Chambers accuses Hiss of being a communist spy, 1948
Crime
Sodomy arrest sparks controversy, 1982
Disaster
Boeing 707 crashes into a mountain near Agadir, Morocco , 1975
General Interest
Columbus sets sail, 1492
Sir Roger Casement hanged, 1916
Soviets release Mathias Rust, 1988
Hollywood
Multimillion-dollar baby photos published, 2008
Literary
Last installment of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is published, 1861
Music
"The Macarena" begins its reign atop the U.S. pop charts, 1996
Old West
Donner party encounters first delay, 1846
Presidential
Calvin Coolidge takes oath of office after Harding's death, 1923
Sports
NBA is born, 1949
Vietnam War
TV news shows Marines burning village, 1965
Marines launch Operation Prairie, 1966
World War I
Germany and France declare war on each other, 1914
World War II
Italians move on British Somaliland, 1940

Presidential

Aug 3, 1923:

Calvin Coolidge takes oath of office after Harding's death

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On this day in 1923, Calvin Coolidge is sworn in as the 30th president of the United States, hours after the death of President Warren G. Harding.

Born July 4, 1872, in Plymouth, Vermont, Coolidge was the son of a village storekeeper. He graduated from Amherst College in Massachusetts and worked his way up in the political ranks in that state as a Republican, from city councilman in Northampton in 1898 to governor in 1918. Coolidge made it onto the Republican ticket in 1920 as Harding's running mate, and they won a decisive victory over a Democratic pairing of James Cox and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In 1923, Harding's administration was tainted by the emergence of corruption scandals involving Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty and other high government officials, a group known as the Ohio Gang. A distraught Harding sought refuge from Washington during a summer vacation but died suddenly in San Francisco late on August 2, after suffering a heart attack or stroke. Coolidge got the news of Harding's death early the next morning, while visiting family in Vermont. He took the oath of office by the light of a kerosene lamp; his father, a notary public, administered it using the family's Bible.

Coolidge immediately began working to rehabilitate the tarnished image of the government's executive branch, projecting an image of old-fashioned New England values and Puritan austerity that reassured a troubled public. A man of few words—he was known as "Silent Cal"—Coolidge became an extremely popular president, winning more than 54 percent of the popular vote when he was reelected in 1924. His time in the White House coincided with an era of unprecedented material prosperity and technological advances, with consumers snapping up widely available new products such as automobiles, radios and household appliances like vacuum cleaners and washing machines.

Strongly conservative, Coolidge believed the government should do little to interfere with business and industry, whether it was to check the growing power of big corporations or to aid struggling industries such as agriculture. He supported tax cuts for businesses and high tariffs to protect U.S. goods, but vetoed aid to farmers as well as a plan to produce electric power cheaply on the Tennessee River. Taking office just five years after the First World War ended, Coolidge favored isolationism in foreign policy, and opposed American membership in the League of Nations.

Though he almost certainly would have won reelection in 1928, Coolidge decided not to run, retiring from politics before the stock market disaster of November 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression that crippled the country. He died of a heart attack in January 1933. Though remembered fondly for restoring dignity to the White House, the Coolidge era also went down in history as a time of governmental complacency in the face of impending economic disaster.

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This Week in History, Aug 3 - Aug 9

Aug 03, 1923
Calvin Coolidge takes oath of office after Harding's death
Aug 04, 1753
Washington receives highest Freemason rank
Aug 05, 1861
Lincoln imposes first federal income tax
Aug 06, 1965
Johnson signs Voting Rights Act
Aug 07, 1990
Bush orders Operation Desert Shield
Aug 08, 1974
Nixon resigns
Aug 09, 1974
Ford is inaugurated

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