Big speech

A date which will live in world history. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

President Franklin Roosevelt had just finished lunch 79 years ago today, when he heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Barely 24 hours later, he was addressing a joint session of Congress, giving perhaps the most important speech of his lifetime.

His address ran just 500 words—so, twice as long as the Gettysburg Address, but still considerably shorter than this newsletter. There were at least three drafts that we know of. I love that we can go back and see how it developed during the crash one-day writing session, under intense pressure.

The National Archives has images of “DRAFT No. 1” on its website — typed, but with penciled in edits from FDR himself.

The first sentence begins: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in world history…”

But then, “world history” is crossed out in pencil, and the word “infamy” replaces it—creating one of the most memorable lines that we Americans probably all learned in high school U.S. history, if not before.

FDR even made last-minute c…