Herbert Hoover
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49 free Herbert Hoover trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Herbert Hoover is remembered for one thing, the Great Depression, but his life before and after the White House was far stranger than the caricature. An orphaned Quaker boy from Iowa, he joined Stanford's first class, got rich running gold mines in Australia and China, then spent World War I feeding occupied Belgium and later famine-struck Russia. As Commerce Secretary he shaped radio, aviation and the 1927 Mississippi flood response, and he won the 1928 election in a landslide. Then the market crashed. This quiz covers the Smoot–Hawley tariff, the Bonus Army, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, shanty towns that carried his name, and the 1932 wipeout by Franklin Roosevelt. It also follows his 31-year retirement: the feud with FDR, the friendship with Truman, the Hoover Commission, and the 90th birthday he greeted with the words "Too old." Fifty sourced questions, easy to hard, each with an explanation that adds one more detail.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Hoover lost in 1932 to Franklin Roosevelt, then governor of which state?
New York
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.
Q 02In which state was Hoover born?
Iowa
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.
Q 03Hoover was raised in which religious tradition?
Quaker
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.
Q 04Hoover was a member of the first graduating class of which university?
Stanford
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.
Q 05Hoover made his fortune in which profession?
Mining engineer
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.
Q 06Hoover's first job abroad was in the "red dust and white heat" of which continent?
Australia
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.
Q 07The Hoovers were trapped in China by which uprising shortly after arriving?
Boxer Rebellion
Boxer Rebellion. During the 1900 siege of Tientsin he built barricades and organised the food supplies while his wife Lou helped at the hospital.
Q 08Hoover and his wife published the first English translation of which 16th-century work?
De re metallica
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.
Q 09During World War I, Hoover headed a relief commission feeding which occupied country?
Belgium
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.
Q 10Which president appointed Hoover to lead the U.S. Food Administration in 1917?
Woodrow Wilson
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.
Q 11As World War I food administrator, Hoover cut American consumption mainly through what?
Voluntary appeals
Voluntary appeals. Hoover refused to ration, asking families for meatless and wheatless days instead, and economising on food became known as "Hooverizing".
Q 12After WWI, Hoover's relief administration fed millions during the 1921 famine in which country?
Russia
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".
Q 13Hooverball, invented by the White House doctor to keep Hoover fit, was played over a net with which ball?
A medicine ball
Q 21What did Coolidge say Hoover had given him for six years — "all of it bad"?
Unsolicited advice
Unsolicited advice. Party regulars shared Coolidge's view and neither liked nor trusted Hoover, yet the 1928 convention nominated him on the first ballot.
Q 22What did a 1928 Republican ad for Hoover boast of putting "in every pot"?
A chicken
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.
Q 23The stock market crashed in which month of Hoover's first year in office?
October 1929
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.
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.
Q 14Hoover served as Secretary of Commerce under which two presidents?
Harding and Coolidge
Harding and Coolidge. He took over a sleepy department known for lighthouses and fisheries and made it as influential as State or the Treasury.
Q 15As Commerce Secretary, Hoover helped pass a 1927 act regulating which new medium?
Radio
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.
Q 16Which 1927 natural disaster did Hoover coordinate the federal response to?
Great Mississippi Flood
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.
Q 17Whom did Hoover defeat in a landslide in the 1928 presidential election?
Al Smith
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.
Q 18Which Kaw Nation member became Hoover's vice president?
Charles Curtis
Charles Curtis. Then Senate majority leader, he was added to the 1928 ticket to win over farmers who distrusted Hoover.
Q 19For 14 years after Hoover lost office, federal officials called Hoover Dam by what other name?
Boulder Dam
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.
Q 20What phrase did Hoover use in 1928 to contrast America with European "state socialism"?
Rugged individualism
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.
Q 24Which tariff act did Hoover sign in June 1930 over economists' objections?
Smoot–Hawley
Smoot–Hawley. A thousand economists petitioned him to veto it; he signed anyway, and trading partners hit back with tariffs that froze world trade.
Q 25What were 1930s shanty towns nicknamed after President Hoover?
Hoovervilles
Hoovervilles. The word is credited to Charles Michelson, publicity chief of the Democratic National Committee, who wanted the president blamed for the slump.
Q 26What did the epithet "Hoover leather" refer to?
Cardboard in worn shoe soles
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.
Q 27In 1932 Hoover created which agency to lend to banks, railroads and local governments?
Reconstruction Finance Corporation
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.
Q 28Hoover's 1931 moratorium put a one-year freeze on which payments?
War debts and reparations
War debts and reparations. Hoover hoped to stop a German banking collapse, but France balked and the panic spread anyway.
Q 29Hoover refused to take the United States off which monetary system?
The gold standard
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.
Q 30With unemployment near its peak, Hoover's 1932 Revenue Act did what to income taxes?
Raised them
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.