Franklin D. Roosevelt was born.
Franklin D. Roosevelt . He directed the United States government during most of the Great Depression and World War II . He is often rated by scholars as one of the three greatest U.S. Presidents , along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln . In the 1932 presidential election , Roosevelt defeated incumbent Republican president Herbert Hoover in a landslide to win the presidency . As an active military leader , Roosevelt implemented a war strategy on two fronts that ended in the defeat of the Axis Powers , and he initiated the development of the world 's first atomic bomb .