The meeting occurred in the midst of World War II. Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the leaders of Great Britain and The United States, respectively, had desired a meeting with Joseph Stalin, the leader of Russia, to discuss the strategy the three countries would take in dealing with the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan). They all finally met when Stalin agreed to meet the two men in Tehran, Iran, in November 1943.

Stalin insisted the other two powers relieve the pressure on his country by opening up a western front. This would cause Germany to have to fight a war on two sides. During their conversations it was found that Stalin and Roosevelt agreed on the dismantling of the British Empire and that all three men agreed the German state should be dismantled. This would ensure Germany didn’t rise to power for a third time, the second being after the end of World War I.

Great Britain and The United States did eventually attack the German’s western front when they stormed Normandy on D-Day and began the liberation of France in June 1944.

Physicist Enrico Fermi packed up and emigrated to the United States in 1938, the same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics. Instead of returning home after accepting the award in Stockholm he continued on to the United States because the atmosphere in Italy was beginning to become toxic for his Jewish wife as German Nazis gained power in the region. Soon afer his arrival in the United States he found himself at the University of Chicago where he continued his work on nuclear reactions as part of the Manhattan Project (the group of scientists charged with creating the worlds first nuclear bomb).

When construction of an off-campus site was postponed Fermi suggested the reactor be built in a squash court underneath the stands of the University’s athletic field. The reactor was assembled in November 1942 and on December 2 the world’s first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction was initiated in the reactor named Chicago Pile-1.

The development of this technology led to the first nuclear bomb test only a few years later, in July 1945, and later still the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Extra fun fact: the element fermium is named after him

Two black men, Roosevelt Townes and Robert McDaniels, were lynched by a white mob on April 13, 1937. They mob was convinced the two men were responsible for the shooting murder of a white storekeeper in Duck Hill, Mississippi.

The police used bloodhounds to track the scent from the scene of the crime and ended up at the house of two black brothers, setting the stage for a black man to be charged with the crime. Eventually, that man became Roosevelt Townes. When officers showed up to question Townes in January he ran and was eventually captured in Memphis in early April and returned to Mississippi.

Townes acquaintance Robert McDaniels was also charged for the murder at the same time as Townes. The two men stood before the judge on the morning of April 5 and when the court adjourned for lunch a mob of approximately 100 men kidnapped the two prisoners. They were driven to within one mile of the store where the murder took place and each chained to a tree.

The two men were tortured with a blow torch and confessed to every accusation. Townes begged for the mob to kill him. McDaniels was subjected to the same treatment but was also shot. Luckily for him, one of the shots went through his head and killed him. Townes, barely conscious, was incapacitated while the mob surrounded the tree with brush, doused him with gasoline, and lit him on fire.

The US House of Representatives were debating anti-lynching legislation at the same time these murders occurred. The legislation was never approved and in 2005 the Senate formally apologized for failing to recognize and take action against lynchings.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President of the United States in the election of 1932 and was scheduled to be sworn in on March 4 1933. During this period he decided to take a Florida vacation and found himself in Miami before sailing to the Carribean.

Roosevelt had agreed to meet his constituents and give a short speech on the night of February 15^th. Among the people who showed up to see the President-elect was the Mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak. Cermak was standing next to Roosevelt when shots were fired by Giuseppe Zangara, an Italian immigrant and naturalized citizen.

Zangara had purchased the handgun only days before. He fired five shots in total and hit five people, none of them Roosevelt. Rooevelt stayed with Cermak on his trip to the hospital and visited all five victims.

Cermak died 19 days later from an infection and Zangara was charged with first degree murder. He was executed on March 20^th, 1933, a little over a month after his attempt on FDR’s life.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire occurred in New York City in March 1911 and caused the deaths of 146 garment workers. The main reason this fire was so deadly was because the owners of the factory had a policy which kept key doors locked in order to prevent thefts and unauthorized breaks. The workers ranged in age from 14-43 and of the 146 deaths, 123 were women.

Frances Perkins witnessed the events that day and was tapped to lead a committee on public safety. This committee was responsible for the recommendation of new legislation that would limit the workweek of women and children to 54 hours. It was in this capacity she met a New York State Senator named Franklin Delano Roosevelt and she would later become the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet as Secretary of Labor.

Between 1911 and 1913 numerous laws, including the “54 hour bill,” would be passed in New York, all in attempt to improve the working conditions for factory workers. These changes would make New York one of the most progressive states in regards to labor laws.

The historic flight took place in 1943 when United States Presiden Franklin Delano Roosevelt took a Boeing 314 Flying Boat across the Atlantic to a WWII strategy meeting with Winston Churchill in Casablanca.

Although this was the first time a sitting president took a flight, this wasn’t the first trip made by FDR. He had previously taken a trip from New York to Chicago to accept the Democratic nomination for the presidency in person. His legs had been left useless after he contracted polio and it was thought that by flying to Chicago FDR would be able to show the nation how willing and able he was to meet the country’s challenges head on. This was the first time a nominee had taken a trip by plane in order to accept the nomination in person.

Roosevelt would go on to win four presidential elections and died in office in 1945 at the age of 63.