On May 27, 1931, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed an “unlimited national emergency” during a radio address from the White House.

In 1933, the Chicago World’s Fair, celebrating “A Century of Progress,” officially opened. Also: Walt Disney’s Academy Award-winning animated short “The Three Little Pigs” was first released.

In 1942, Doris “Dorie” Miller, a cook aboard the USS West Virginia, became the first African American to receive the Navy Cross for displaying “extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety” during Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

In 1994, Nobel Prize- winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia to the emotional cheers of thousands after spending two decades in exile.