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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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More from The World Wars

Marines and soldiers storm Guam's beaches, opening a three-week fight to retake it

Two and a half years after its surrender, the island is under American naval gunfire again.

The Senate buries Roosevelt's plan to add justices, 70 to 20

Five months after the fight began, the bill goes back to committee and does not return.

Palermo falls to Patton's Seventh Army

Nine days after landing in the dark, American tanks roll into a Sicilian capital the Italian garrison no longer has the will to defend.

Washington cuts off Japan's oil; London and the Dutch follow within days

Tokyo's push into southern Indochina triggers an embargo that erases four-fifths of Japan's oil supply.

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