50 Fun Facts About Herbert Hoover

Hoover was which number president of the United States?

He served a single term, 1929 to 1933, sandwiched between Calvin Coolidge and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In which state was Hoover born?

He was born in West Branch in 1874 and is buried there beside his presidential library.

Hoover was raised in which religious tradition?

After being orphaned he was sent to Newberg, Oregon, another frontier town settled largely by Midwestern Quakers.

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

He got into the "Pioneer Class" in 1891 despite failing every entrance exam except mathematics.

Hoover made his fortune in which profession?

He earned a reputation as a "doctor of sick mines" and was worth about $4 million by 1914.

Hoover's first job abroad was running gold mines on which continent?

He described the goldfields around Coolgardie as a land of "black flies, red dust and white heat".

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

He had come to develop gold mines near Tianjin; a multinational force lifted the siege at the Battle of Tientsin.

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

Georgius Agricola's treatise on mining and metallurgy appealed to Hoover's interest in the history of science.

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

The commission became a virtual republic of relief with its own flag, navy, factories, mills and railroads.

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

Hoover became known as the nation's "food czar" and pushed meatless Mondays and wheatless Wednesdays.

Government publicists dubbed voluntary wartime food saving what?

Hoover kept ordering publicity not to mention him by name, and they kept ignoring him.

After WWI, Hoover's relief administration famously fed famine victims in which country?

Asked if he was aiding Bolshevism, he replied, "twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!"

Which Soviet writer told Hoover his help would enter history as a "gigantic achievement"?

The Russian famine of 1921–22 killed six million; the ARA likely saved millions more.

Hoover served as Secretary of Commerce under which two presidents?

Colleagues called him "Secretary of Commerce and Under-Secretary of all other departments".

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

Families with sets grew from 300,000 in 1923 to 10 million by 1929 during his tenure.

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

He set up over a hundred tent cities and raised $17 million, and by 1928 was overshadowing Coolidge himself.

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

Smith was the first Catholic major-party nominee; Hoover took 444 of 531 electoral votes and cracked the Solid South.

Who was Hoover's vice president?

Delegates considered renominating Dawes, but Coolidge, who hated him, called that "a personal affront".

Where did Hoover accept the 1928 Republican nomination?

He told the huge crowd he would continue the policies of Harding and Coolidge.

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

He saw the post-war choice as between individual enterprise and the "paternalism" of government ownership.

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

Coolidge still declined to oppose his popular Commerce Secretary for fear of splitting the party.

What share of the popular vote did Hoover win in 1928?

Four years later his share plunged by 18.6 points to under 40 percent.

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

Hoover tried to put a positive spin on Black Tuesday and asked business leaders to avoid wage cuts.

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

Canada, France and others retaliated, trade contracted, and progressive Republicans never forgave him.

What were 1930s shanty towns nicknamed?

A "Hoover blanket" was an old newspaper and "Hoover leather" was cardboard patching a shoe sole.

What did the epithet "Hoover leather" refer to?

The insults piled up as unemployment climbed from 11.9 percent in 1930 to nearly 23 percent by early 1932.

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

It saved many businesses but its conservative bankers were too cautious to revive commercial lending.

The 1931 one-year suspension of European war-debt payments is known as what?

It was welcomed on both sides of the Atlantic, but Germany stayed on the brink of default.

Hoover refused to abandon which monetary system, calling alternatives "collectivism"?

Other countries left it during 1931; Britain's departure that September was a turning point.

The Revenue Act of 1932 raised the top income tax rate to what?

It rolled back much of Mellon's 1920s tax cuts; a proposed sales tax was defeated in the House 211–178.

Which body did Hoover create to advise on Prohibition?

Its 1931 report criticized enforcement and noted growing public opposition, not what Hoover had hoped for.

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

Hoover had not ordered the clearance but endorsed it afterward, which hurt his re-election campaign.

The Bonus Army veterans wanted early payment of bonuses due in which year?

The 1924 World War Adjusted Compensation Act had promised them; thousands camped in Washington in June 1932.

Hoover's 1930 Clark Memorandum rejected which earlier foreign-policy doctrine?

It marked a move toward non-intervention in Latin America; he also ended the occupation of Nicaragua.

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?

The Stimson Doctrine said the U.S. would not recognize territory seized by force, a response to Japan's Manchuria invasion.

How many states did Hoover carry in the 1932 election?

He lost the electoral vote 59–472, and was booed at campaign stops in a way no sitting president had been.

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?

He called the NRA and AAA "fascistic" and the 1933 Banking Act a "move to gigantic socialism".

On a 1938 trip to Europe, Hoover met which dictator and stayed at Göring's hunting lodge?

He came away believing Hitler was mad but not a threat to the U.S., and later joined the America First Committee.

When Baruch suggested the ex-president help the war effort, how did FDR reply?

Roosevelt prefaced it with "I'm not Jesus Christ"; the idea was dropped.

Which president sent Hoover to survey food needs in occupied Germany in 1946?

Hoover warned that turning Germany into a "pastoral state" would mean removing 25 million people.

Hoover chaired a 1947 commission reorganizing which part of government?

Truman adopted some of the "Hoover Commission" ideas for cutting waste and strengthening White House control of policy.

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

The self-deprecating humor helped rehabilitate his reputation in the 1950s.

In 1949, Hoover declined an offer of which office from Governor Dewey?

The seat vacated by Robert F. Wagner would have been his for only two months.

Hoover reached what milestone age in 1964, only the second president to do so?

Asked how it felt, he said "Too old." Only John Adams had got there before him.

Hoover's last known written words were a get-well note to which former president?

He joked that "bathtubs are a menace to ex-presidents", recalling one that fractured his vertebrae in Venezuela in 1946.

Roughly how long was Hoover's post-presidency, then the longest ever?

The 11,553-day record stood until Jimmy Carter surpassed it in September 2012.

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.

Hoover's "magnum opus" on FDR's foreign policy was finally published in which year?

He began Freedom Betrayed in 1944; historian George H. Nash edited it for publication nearly half a century after his death.