In your article about December 7, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt is quoted as saying in his dictation to Grace Tully, “a day which will live in infamy.” I was nineteen at the time and remember distinctly listening to Roosevelt’s speech over the living-room radio in our home. I remember Roosevelt saying, “a date which will live in infamy,” and in doing research earlier this month for a book I am writing on baseball in 1941 (the last season before the war), I noted the word date rather than day in newspaper reports of the speech.

Did Roosevelt indeed dictate the word day and then accidentally or intentionally switch to date in his speech? Or are both my memory and the newspaper reports inaccurate?