Reading the Sunday paper on August 17, 1941.

President Roosevelt is in Maine on his return trip to Washington after having met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill aboard US and British ships anchored off the coast of Newfoundland.

There, the men signed the Atlantic Charter, stating the two nations’ beliefs on the rights of self-determination, freedom and the need for collective world action in economics and security.

FDR tells reporters that the US is no nearer war than previously, but the Atlantic meeting is viewed as ‘signaling a new era of anti-Nazi collaboration to achieve the final destruction of Nazi tyranny.’

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“I would like you to do us a favor though.”

Presidents ask for favors.

And it’s fine if the favor is intended to benefit the nation.

For Trump, ‘the ask’ was for a personal political favor, and his request led to his first impeachment.

In July 1961, ‘the presidential ask’ was for the retention of CIA access to an airbase in Pakistan.

America’s national security was at stake.

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What did Lincoln do today?

On this day in 1855, Lincoln wrote to a Kentucky judge who had once represented his wife’s family in a legal matter.

The judge had once served in Congress, and, while there, the judge had spoken of the need for the “peaceful extinction of slavery” in America.

Thirty-six years had passed since then.

And, in his letter, Lincoln notes that the “experience” of the intervening decades “has demonstrated, I think, that there is no peaceful extinction of slavery in prospect for us.”

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Times change.

They really do.

And few places have seen more changes than New York City.

Here’s a big change: for more than a hundred years, New York City was the center of the nation’s garment industry.

It began in the late 1840s, when two drivers of economic growth — new machines and eager workers — came together there.

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‘There’s nothing that we can’t do.’

You hear this sometimes.

And the cynical ones among us usually snicker and roll their eyes.

But when you think about what ordinary people did during World War II to support the nation’s war effort, you have to believe it.

It seems there was nothing those folks wouldn’t do to help win the war.

There are so many examples.

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‘Come to the aid of your country.’

When are you too old to serve?

In 1861, when American men averaged a forty-year life span, John Burns found out the answer to that question was age 69.

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Change is opportunity dressed in new clothes.

The Civil War upended the business of cattle ranching.

During the War, while Texas ranchers were away fighting, their cattle herds scattered across the open range.

Their enslaved labor left.

And the market for beef changed.

Markets in the South had collapsed, but demand for beef was surging in the North.

These changes brought an opportunity for Texas ranchers to get back on their feet.

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The colored troops.

On this day in 1863, President Lincoln wrote to General Grant at Vicksburg.

The city had fallen to Grant’s army a month earlier, giving Union forces control of the Mississippi River.

New things were now possible.

Among them was the recruitment of enslaved men of the South into the US Army.

This was the subject of Lincoln’s letter.

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The war horse.

Eight million horses, donkeys and mules were killed in World War I.

They fell victim to machine gun fire, artillery and poison gas, became injured in barbed wire entanglements, suffered high rates of disease, and, in the case of German horses, suffered malnutrition and starvation.

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Let’s talk about a bug guy named Louis Rhead.

Louis started out as an artist in Staffordshire, England, where his family had worked in the pottery industry for generations.

He had a huge talent.

When Louis was thirteen, his parents sent him to Paris for formal art training.

And when he was twenty-four, Louis came to America to work as an art director in a New York publishing house.

For the next dozen years, he produced posters in the art nouveau style then the rage for store windows and magazines.

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