To go down as something means to be remembered or recorded as something/in a particular manner.
Example sentences:
- Some people think the Trump presidency will go down in infamy.
- Hurricane Sandy will go down as one of the most devastating hurricanes on the eastern seaboard.
A question for native speakers. In president F.D. Roosevelt's famous Infamy Speech after the Pearl Harbor attact, he says: "This date will live in infamy". Is "go down in infamy" an expression that would be more likely to be used today? Or are they completely interchangeable?
Below is a recording of Roosevelt's speech. Notice the so-called Mid-Atlantic accent nobody hasn't used since WW II. It was used by small circles of mainly old money elites on the East Coast. The accent is non-rhotic (the "r" is pronounced similarly to how it's pronounced in most of England today) and the vowel stretching sounds similar to British Received Pronunciation. It sounds as if American elites were imitating the larger and more powerful empire of the early 20th century and that the rise of the USA as a military superpower changed that.