Wednesday · November 11, 2026

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American history, reported as it happened

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Congress bars arms sales to any nation at war

Americans who sail on warring ships now do so at their own risk, the new law warns.

Four years after Japan seized Manchuria and with Mussolini massing troops near Ethiopia, Congress moved to keep American guns and money out of foreign wars. On August 31, 1935, lawmakers passed the Neutrality Act, banning arms and war-material sales to any nation at war and warning citizens who traveled on belligerent ships that they did so at their own risk. The law was written to expire in six months. Roosevelt signed it reluctantly, then used it within weeks against both sides when Italy invaded Ethiopia…

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More from August 31

South of Atlanta, Federal troops crack Hardee's line at Jonesborough

Hood had already pulled half the defenders back toward Atlanta before the attack even began.

Under a full moon, Maryland militia kill the British captain leading a night raid

Sir Peter Parker bleeds out on a Kent County farm field while his men flee for their boats.

The ground rolls like an awful roar; Charleston is shaking apart

At 9:50 p.m. the earth under a city with no history of quakes tears itself open along an ancient, forgotten fault.

Patent number 609,610 formalizes years of work by Edison's laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey.

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Read the full August 31 edition →Everything that happened on August 31 →

More from The World Wars

A football game goes out over the air for the first time; Pittsburgh listens in

Harold Arlin calls the action from Forbes Field as Washington & Jefferson meets Carnegie Tech.

A captain runs pillbox to pillbox under fire, and Crucifix Hill falls

Bobbie Brown took three wounds and kept directing his company until the hill outside Aachen was secure.

Marines cross the Matanikau and the Japanese line breaks

Three days of fighting end with Japanese forces falling back from the river they had held since late September.

Sixty B-17s go down over Schweinfurt; the Eighth Air Force loses the sky over Germany

Of 291 Flying Fortresses sent to hit the ball bearing works, 650 airmen did not come home.

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