49 Fun Facts About Herbert Hoover

Hoover lost in 1932 to Franklin Roosevelt, then governor of which state?

New York. Governor Roosevelt carried 42 of the 48 states, a landslide even bigger than the one that had swept Hoover into office four years earlier.

In which state was Hoover born?

Iowa. Orphaned as a boy, he left West Branch at 11 for an uncle's home in Oregon, and he is buried on a hill overlooking the cottage where he was born.

Hoover was raised in which religious tradition?

Quaker. He rarely attended meetings as an adult, yet he held fast to Quaker tenets such as charity, which shaped his years of famine relief.

Hoover was a member of the first graduating class of which university?

Stanford. He paid his way by starting a student laundry service, and it was there that he met Lou Henry, the geology student he later married.

Hoover made his fortune in which profession?

Mining engineer. He became known as the "doctor of sick mines" for turning failing operations around, and was worth an estimated $4 million by 1914.

Hoover's first job abroad was in the "red dust and white heat" of which continent?

Australia. From there he cabled a marriage proposal to Lou Henry in California; she wired back yes, and they married in 1899 before sailing for China.

The Hoovers were trapped in China by which uprising shortly after arriving?

Boxer Rebellion. During the 1900 siege of Tientsin he built barricades and organised the food supplies while his wife Lou helped at the hospital.

Hoover and his wife published the first English translation of which 16th-century work?

De re metallica. They spent their spare time turning Agricola's Latin treatise on metals into English, and both were awarded a gold medal for the translation.

During World War I, Hoover headed a relief commission feeding which occupied country?

Belgium. Occupied by Germany and cut off by a British blockade, its people faced starvation until his commission shipped in food for some nine million people there and in northern France.

Which president appointed Hoover to lead the U.S. Food Administration in 1917?

Woodrow Wilson. The Democratic president trusted him enough to take him to the Paris peace talks as an adviser, though Hoover soon declared himself a Republican.

As World War I food administrator, Hoover cut American consumption mainly through what?

Voluntary appeals. Hoover refused to ration, asking families for meatless and wheatless days instead, and economising on food became known as "Hooverizing".

After WWI, Hoover's relief administration fed millions during the 1921 famine in which country?

Russia. Critics said he was propping up the Bolsheviks; he replied that twenty million people were starving and "whatever their politics, they shall be fed".

Hooverball, invented by the White House doctor to keep Hoover fit, was played over a net with which ball?

A medicine ball. The six-pound ball was thrown over an eight-foot net and scored like tennis, an idea Hoover picked up from a game sailors played aboard a battleship.

Hoover served as Secretary of Commerce under which two presidents?

Harding and Coolidge. He took over a sleepy department known for lighthouses and fisheries and made it as influential as State or the Treasury.

As Commerce Secretary, Hoover helped pass a 1927 act regulating which new medium?

Radio. Weeks after the act became law, Hoover's own face was sent by wire from Washington to viewers in another city in an early American demonstration of television.

Which 1927 natural disaster did Hoover coordinate the federal response to?

Great Mississippi Flood. He marshalled Army engineers, the Coast Guard and the Red Cross, and the front-page acclaim made him the leading candidate for the 1928 nomination.

Whom did Hoover defeat in a landslide in the 1928 presidential election?

Al Smith. The Catholic governor was hit by a wave of anti-Catholic attacks, some spread by the Ku Klux Klan, and he lost even his own home state.

Which Kaw Nation member became Hoover's vice president?

Charles Curtis. Then Senate majority leader, he was added to the 1928 ticket to win over farmers who distrusted Hoover.

For 14 years after Hoover lost office, federal officials called Hoover Dam by what other name?

Boulder Dam. The incoming interior secretary dropped Hoover's name from the project in 1933, and it took an act of Congress in 1947 to put it back.

What phrase did Hoover use in 1928 to contrast America with European "state socialism"?

Rugged individualism. In the same campaign he boasted that America was nearer to abolishing poverty than any land in history, words turned against him once the slump came.

What did Coolidge say Hoover had given him for six years — "all of it bad"?

Unsolicited advice. Party regulars shared Coolidge's view and neither liked nor trusted Hoover, yet the 1928 convention nominated him on the first ballot.

What did a 1928 Republican ad for Hoover boast of putting "in every pot"?

A chicken. The line is often put in Hoover's mouth, though he never said it himself; that November he won 58 percent of the vote and 40 of the 48 states.

The stock market crashed in which month of Hoover's first year in office?

October 1929. Hoover had been president for less than eight months; within weeks he called business leaders to the White House and won pledges not to cut wages.

Which tariff act did Hoover sign in June 1930 over economists' objections?

Smoot–Hawley. A thousand economists petitioned him to veto it; he signed anyway, and trading partners hit back with tariffs that froze world trade.

What were 1930s shanty towns nicknamed after President Hoover?

Hoovervilles. The word is credited to Charles Michelson, publicity chief of the Democratic National Committee, who wanted the president blamed for the slump.

What did the epithet "Hoover leather" refer to?

Cardboard in worn shoe soles. Democrats coined a string of such jabs to pin the slump on the president, among them the "Hoover flag", an empty pocket turned inside out.

In 1932 Hoover created which agency to lend to banks, railroads and local governments?

Reconstruction Finance Corporation. It outlived his presidency: the next administration widened its lending and made it a pillar of the New Deal, and it ran until 1957.

Hoover's 1931 moratorium put a one-year freeze on which payments?

War debts and reparations. Hoover hoped to stop a German banking collapse, but France balked and the panic spread anyway.

Hoover refused to take the United States off which monetary system?

The gold standard. Britain abandoned it in the autumn of 1931 and his successor took America off it in 1933, a step that Hoover went on attacking.

With unemployment near its peak, Hoover's 1932 Revenue Act did what to income taxes?

Raised them. To close the deficit the act pushed the top rate to 63 percent and undid much of the tax cutting of the 1920s.

Which commission did Hoover create in 1929 to study Prohibition and law enforcement?

Wickersham Commission. Beyond finding Prohibition widely evaded, it exposed police use of the "third degree", the infliction of pain to force confessions.

Which general cleared the Bonus Army camp from Washington in 1932?

Douglas MacArthur. Hoover twice sent word not to cross the river to the main camp; the general pressed on anyway and the shanties burned, which damaged Hoover's re-election bid.

Which cavalry major helped clear the Bonus Army from Washington in 1932?

George S. Patton. He rode against fellow veterans who wanted early payment of a bonus not due until 1945; another major on duty that day was Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The Clark Memorandum, released by Hoover in 1930, argued the Monroe Doctrine gave no warrant for which later policy?

Roosevelt Corollary. Hoover matched the words with action, pulling American troops out of Nicaragua and signing a treaty to end the occupation of Haiti.

Which 1930 agreement, pushed by Hoover, first capped tonnage of auxiliary warships?

Earlier agreements had only limited capital ships; Hoover hoped disarmament would free money for domestic needs.

Who was Hoover's Secretary of State, namesake of a non-recognition doctrine?

Henry L. Stimson. Although a lifelong Republican, he returned in 1940 as Secretary of War under a Democratic president and oversaw the building of the atomic bomb.

Hoover carried only six states in 1932; which was by far the largest?

Pennsylvania. The other five were small states in the Northeast, and Hoover lost even California, the state he called home.

After his wife's death in 1944, Hoover lived permanently in which hotel?

During the war a general visited his suite every two weeks to brief him on Allied plans, but never mentioned the atomic bomb.

Hoover's 1934 book attacking the New Deal was titled what?

The Challenge to Liberty. He argued that fascism lay at the root of New Deal planning, and he kept up the attack on his successor's programmes for the next thirty years.

On a 1938 tour of Europe, the former president Hoover had a private meeting with which dictator?

Adolf Hitler. Hoover was irritated by his shouting in their private talk, yet he went on opposing American entry into the war in Europe until Pearl Harbor.

When Bernard Baruch suggested giving Hoover a war job, how did Roosevelt reply?

"I'm not raising Hoover from the dead". Yet in 1920 Roosevelt had written that Hoover was "certainly a wonder" and wished the country could make him president.

In 1931 Hoover pressed a button in the White House to light up which newly finished skyscraper?

Empire State Building. The gesture on its opening day was symbolic: while Hoover pushed his button in Washington, someone else threw the switches in the tower itself.

Hoover chaired a 1947 commission reorganizing which part of government?

The executive branch. Republicans in Congress hoped the commission would cut back the New Deal; instead it urged a stronger presidency, and most of its proposals were adopted.

Hoover joked he was the only person of distinction to have what named after him?

A depression. The man blamed for the slump of the 1930s was later called back by two presidents to lead commissions on how the government was run.

In 1931 Hoover signed the law that gave the United States its first official what?

National anthem. "The Star-Spangled Banner" had been sung for more than a century, but it took an act of Congress, signed by Hoover in March 1931, to make it official.

Days before his death in 1964, Hoover sent a get-well message to which political figure?

Harry S. Truman. He had been hurt in a bathtub fall; the Democrat and the Republican had been unlikely friends since Truman called Hoover back into public service in 1945.

Hoover's retirement was the longest of any president until which later president overtook him?

Jimmy Carter. He passed Hoover's 31 years out of office in September 2012; Hoover had filled his own with dozens of books and two government commissions.

Which riderless horse appeared at Hoover's state funeral, as at JFK's and MacArthur's?

The three state funerals came within a single twelve-month span.

Which book did Hoover call his "magnum opus", though it stayed unpublished until long after his death?

Freedom Betrayed. He spent twenty years on this indictment of Franklin Roosevelt's wartime diplomacy, and it finally appeared in 2011, nearly half a century after he finished it.