March 6th is the 66th day in the Gregorian Calendar. In 1933, during the Great Depression, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a "bank holiday", freezing all financial transactions and closing all banks. The Emergency Banking Act of 1933 created bank holidays in an attempt to stabalize the banking system. Roosevelt's bank holiday lasted four days and gave the federal government time to inspect all banks, re-open those that were financially sound, re-organize those that could be saved, and close those that were beyond repair. Within two weeks of banks reopening, Americans redeposited more than half of the cash they had withdrew before the bank holiday. The national bank holiday and the Emergency Banking Act were seen as a success, ending the bank runs that bedeviled the Great Depression.
