The Gad About Town

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an “Iron Curtain” has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.—Winston Churchill

Seventy years ago today, former (and future) British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered a speech in a gymnasium at Westminster College, a small school in Fulton, Missouri, in which he described the “sphere of influence” he feared the Soviet Union was striving to develop, expand, and force on Eastern Europe. He employed a phrase that had been in use for decades but had recently regained popularity: Eastern Europe was now behind an “Iron Curtain.” The official title of the talk was, “The Sinews of Peace,” but it is known to this day as Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech.

Many historians consider the speech as a useful moment to mark the start of the Cold War between East and West, the USSR and the US.
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In “A Study in Scarlet,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes novel, Holmes and his friend Dr. John Watson began their first-ever crime scene investigation on March 4, 1881.

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Before the Twentieth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution established January 20 as Inauguration Day, U.S. presidents were inaugurated on March 4, which was the date in 1789 that Congress declared that the Constitution was in effect. Each presidential inauguration—from George Washington’s second to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first—took place on March 4, except for the inaugurations of those presidents who took office after a presidential death and those inaugurations that would have taken place on a Sunday: James Monroe’s second term, Zachary Taylor, Rutherford Hayes, and Woodrow Wilson’s second term.
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