Wednesday · November 11, 2026
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American history, reported as it happened
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19391776 Club

Roosevelt signs the Neutrality Act; Britain and France may now buy American arms for cash

The old embargo is repealed, but buyers must pay on the spot and haul the goods away themselves, and the Customs Service is ordered to enforce it.

For four years, American law had treated every country at war the same way: no arms for anyone. On November 4, 1939, with Germany having invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland, Franklin Roosevelt signed a new Neutrality Act and ordered the Customs Service to put it into effect. Britain and France could now buy weapons from the United States, provided they paid cash immediately and carried the goods away themselves. The embargo acts of 1935 and 1937 were repealed in the same stroke…

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More from November 4
1924

Wyoming elects Nellie Tayloe Ross governor; the widow who said no never campaigned

A month after her husband's death, voters give her 55 percent of the ballots against Republican E. J. Sullivan.
1962

Tightrope flies from Johnston Island, and Operation Fishbowl is finished

A low-yield device on an XM-33 Strypi rocket ends the Atomic Energy Commission's high-altitude test series in the Pacific.
1979

Students storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran and seize hostages; they want the Shah sent home

Hundreds of students blindfold Marines and embassy staff and march them before photographers, with Washington's decision to shelter the exiled Shah as their stated grievance.
20081776 Club
Joe Biden takes the vice presidency over Sarah Palin as John McCain loses the race to succeed George W. Bush.
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More from The World Wars
1945

The gadget detonates; 21,000 tons of TNT in an instant above the Jornada del Muerto

A plutonium device atop a 100-foot tower vaporizes the steel at 5:29 a.m., lighting the sky as far as Amarillo and melting desert sand to green glass.
1945

Churchill, Stalin, and Truman convene at Cecilienhof; a new Europe is on the table

Three months into his presidency, Truman sits down with allies to settle Germany's occupation zones, Poland's government, and where the Reich's eastern border will now fall.
1943

690 American bombers hit Rome; 9,125 bombs fall on San Lorenzo, killing 1,500

A freight yard and steel factory were the targets, but apartment blocks and a papal basilica took hits too; Pope Pius XII walks the rubble before day's end.
1944

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.
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