Celebrations Today – June 16

Holidays and observances

Celebrations Today – USA: June 16

National Fudge Day
National Flip Flop Day – Third Friday in June
National Bloomsday
National Fresh Veggies Day
International Day of the African Child
National Ladies’ Initiated in Baseball Day
National No Orange Clothes Day
National Wish Fulfillment Day
World Sea Turtle Day

Today in US History: June 16

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Resolved…That there be a chief Engineer for the army, in a separate department, and two assistants under him; that the pay of the chief engineer be sixty dollars per month, and the pay of the assistants each, twenty dollars per month.Entry of June 16, 1775,
Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789.
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation, 1774-1875

On June 16, 1775, George Washington was appointed commander in chief of the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress. That same day, the Congress authorized the creation of the post of chief engineer for the army, in anticipation of upcoming battles with British forces. The engineers’ work building fortifications, surveying terrain, and clearing roads during the war proved so valuable to the Revolutionary forces that the Congress resolved, four years later, based on a recommendation from the Board of War:

That the engineers in the service of the United States shall be formed into a corps, and styled the “corps of engineers;” and shall take rank and enjoy the same rights, honours, and privileges, with the other troops…Entry of March 11, 1779,
Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789.
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation, 1774-1875

The future of the corps was even more firmly assured in 1802, when President Thomas Jefferson established the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the first U.S. school of engineering. Until 1866, the superintendent of West Point was an engineer officer. One of West Point’s missions was to train generations of military engineers to participate in both military and civilian engineering projects on behalf of the nation.

The Army Corps of Engineers played an active role in the development and/or completion of many sites in the nation’s capital, including the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, Rock Creek Park, and the Library of Congress. Pierre Charles L’Enfant, a Frenchman who had served as an engineer during the American Revolutionary War, designed the basic plan for the city of Washington, D.C., and supervised the design of its earliest public buildings.

Topographical Engineers, Camp Winfield Scott,
Vicinity of Yorktown, Virginia,
James F. Gibson, photographer,
May 2, 1862.
Selected Civil War Photographs

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has engaged in various civil construction projects and has long maintained a national role in the development of coastal fortifications, lighthouses, and waterways; in the improvement of rivers and harbors; and in the design, building, and maintenance of structures such as bridges, canals, levees, locks, and hydroelectric dams and roads.

To relieve unemployment during the Great Depression, the U.S. Government engaged the Corps of Engineers in planning, constructing, and maintaining a vast flood control network of levees along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. The dams and locks of the related Upper Mississippi Nine-Foot Channel Project mitigated economic problems and brought a fully navigable interior river system to the Midwest.

Aerial View of Lock and Dam, Looking Southeast of the Upper Mississippi River 9-Foot Channel Project,
Lock & Dam 26,
Alton, Madison County, Illinois,
circa 1980.
Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-Present

During World War II, corpsmen worked on military engineering projects in the European and Asian-Pacific theaters—building bases, landing strips, storage depots, and hospitals. The corps both facilitated the mobility of allied troops and countered the mobility of enemy troops. In 1942, they eked out a 1,500-mile trail through the Pacific Northwest, creating a military supply route that became known as the Alcan (Alaska-Canadian) or Alaska Highway. The corps helped to build the nuclear research facilities in the U.S. that were used by participants in the Manhattan Project to develop the Atomic Bomb.

Today, the corps continues its work in the management of water resources, the development of civil and military infrastructure, and the response to natural and man-made disasters, and works with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clean up contaminated sites.

Search across American Memory collections on the phrase Army Corps of Engineers to find a wide array of related materials including historical maps, documents, and engineering drawings.
Search on Army Corps of Engineers in Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-Present to view various projects of the corps.
Browse the Author Index under United States. Army. Corps of Engineers in Nineteenth Century in Print: Books to find published reports and surveys from the corps’ expeditions to explore possible railroad routes between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean.
Search on the keyword engineer in the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741-1799 to find documents recounting the activities of military engineers in the American Revolution
Search on engineer in Selected Civil War Photographs to find a variety of topical photographs taken during the Civil War.
Search on engineer in the Journals of the Continental Congress in A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation, 1774-1875 to see a wide variety of early references to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

A New Deal: The First 100 Days

Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
December 27, 1933.
By Popular Demand: Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies, 1789-Present

June 16, 1933, marked the end of the first hundred days of the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). Those one hundred days were a period of frenetic activity.

Following his inauguration on March 4, Roosevelt immediately sought to stem the financial panic that had begun with the stock market crash of 1929 and to restore public confidence. He started by closing the nation’s banks on March 6. On June 16, 1933, FDR signed the Banking Act, which separated commercial banking from investment banking and established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. He also signed the Farm Credit Act, the Emergency Railroad Transportation Act, and the National Industrial Recovery Act (which created the Public Works Administration).

The investment of federal monies in a series of public works programs, which provided desperately needed jobs, formed an integral part of Roosevelt’s domestic agenda, the New Deal. Under Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, the Public Works Administration initiated and oversaw about 34,000 public works projects. Millions of unemployed Americans went to work in the 1930s in programs such as the Work Projects Administration (originally named the Works Progress Administration), the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Electric Phosphate Smelting Furnace Used to Make Elemental Phosphorus in a
Tennessee Valley Authority Chemical Plant,
Vicinity of Muscle Shoals, Alabama,
Alfred T. Palmer, photographer,
June 1942.
America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA and OWI, ca. 1935-1945

Family Living on Riverboat,
Husband Now on WPA (Works Progress Administration) Labor,
Charleston, West Virginia,
Marion Post Wolcott, photographer,
September 1938.
America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA and OWI, ca. 1935-1945

The Folklore Project of the Federal Writers’ Project, a New Deal program established in 1935, employed writers to collect life histories from a broad spectrum of American citizens. Many of those interviewed expressed gratitude for the New Deal programs:

I am heartily in favor of the New Deal, and its results are apparent even in my neighborhood. In former years, my pastor…was often hard put to it to take care of some of his flock. But the work furnished and the wages paid to those in our neighborhood on the WPA [Works Progress Administration] are apparent, and if it is so in this small section, what must its accomplishments and rehabilitative affects be throughout the United States?”Mrs. Eulalia McCranie,”
Jacksonville, Florida,
Rose Shepherd, interviewer,
circa February 23, 1939.
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940

To my mind one of the greatest accomplishments of the New Deal has been the organization of the Civilian Conservation Camps. The training given the boys will be of lasting benefit. They have changed many a boy from a liability to a valuable asset to his country. They have kept thousands of boys off the roads just idly roaming over the country…”Women and the Changing Times,”
Augusta, Georgia,
Mrs. Daisy Thompson, interviewer,
February 16, 1940.
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940

To read other transcripts of reflections on Roosevelt’s New Deal, search on New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt, the names of programs, or their acronyms in American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940.

See America,
Alexander Dux, artist.
“Posters for the People,”
The New Deal Stage: Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939.The Federal Art Project (FAP) was a branch of the WPA. In its peak years, 1936 to 1938, the FAP employed 5,000 artists across the country, at a salary of $95 a month. They created murals, sculptures, and paintings; taught community art classes to millions; and produced two million posters from 35,000 designs at a cost of about ten cents each.
Learn more about the career of the only president ever elected to office four times. Search the Today in History Archive on Franklin Roosevelt.
The following collections contain extraordinary texts, recordings, posters, and photographs collected under the auspices of New Deal programs:
A search on New Deal in Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-Present yields photographs and data pages of construction projects undertaken during this time.
Use the Collection Connection concerning America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA and OWI, ca. 1935-1945 to develop critical thinking skills and activity ideas.

Today in History – June 16-External Links

Today’s Weather in History
Today in Earthquake History
This Day in Naval History
Today’s Document from the National Archives
Today’s Events, Births & Deaths –Wikipedia
Today in History by AP
On this Day -1950 to 2005 – Today’s Story–BBC
On This Day: The New York Times
This Day in History –History.com
Today in Canadian History – Canada Channel
History of Britain that took place On This Day
Russia in History –Russiapedia

Month: June 2024

History & Celebrations Today – June 16