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19351776 Club

Roosevelt signs the Wagner Act; private workers now have the right to organize, bargain, and strike

The law creates a new federal board to police unfair labor practices and run union elections, replacing years of company-run "unions."

By the summer of 1935, American factory workers had spent years watching company-run "unions" mediate disputes in favor of the company. On July 5, 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act, written by Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York, guaranteeing private sector workers the right to organize, bargain collectively, and strike. The law created the National Labor Relations Board to police unfair labor practices and run union elections. Union membership nearly tripled within the decade, reaching close to 8 million workers by the end of the 1930s…

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More from July 5
1814

Scott's regulars break Riall's line at Chippawa; the British general had taken them for militia

After 25 minutes of volley fire on open ground near the Niagara, the Right Division's lines collapse and American regulars prove they can stand against British veterans.
1775

Congress sends King George a loyalty oath and a list of grievances; the delegates call it their olive branch

Hancock and the full Congress sign the petition in Philadelphia, and envoys Richard Penn and Arthur Lee are bound for London with the appeal.
1859

Captain Brooks claims a mid-Pacific atoll for the United States; he calls it the Middlebrook Islands

The sealing ship Gambia raised the flag under the Guano Islands Act, planting a U.S. claim a third of the way between Honolulu and Tokyo.
18521776 Club
Speaking the day after Independence Day at Corinthian Hall, he calls slavery "the great sin and shame of America" before a mostly white crowd invited by the Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society.
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More from The World Wars
1944

Roosevelt signs the Servicemen's Readjustment Act; veterans to get mortgages, tuition, and a year's pay

Congress voted unanimously, sixteen days after D-Day, with the WWI bonus debacle and the 1932 Bonus Army march still fresh in every lawmaker's memory.
1945

Flag rises on Okinawa; Ushijima and his chief of staff are dead by their own hand

Eighty-two days of cave fighting, monsoon rain, and kamikaze attacks end with organized Japanese resistance broken and ninety miles of runway in Allied hands.
1922

The American Professional Football Association votes to call itself the National Football League

Two years after clubs from four states formalized the game in a Canton auto showroom, the league sheds its borrowed name for one that fits its ambitions.
1937

Navy orders North Carolina and Washington; first battleships laid down in a decade carry 16-inch guns

Japan's refusal to sign the London Naval Treaty triggers an escalator clause, swapping the planned fourteen-inch guns for nine sixteen-inch weapons on both hulls.
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