On this day President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his famous ‘Four Freedoms’ speech to Congress in America: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. At that time, Adolf Hitler was embarking on his quest for world domination, and Roosevelt, well aware of the reluctance of the American people to get involved in another war, warned them: “The future and safety of our country and of our democracy are overwhelmingly involved in events far beyond our borders.” His speech gave the American people a mantra to hold onto when the country was inevitably drawn into the war. It also laid the foundations for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
