Some American presidents have their faces on currency , some get memorialized in films and miniseries and sketches . Then there are the others whose all - but - forgotten names are unceremoniously confiscate to in-between schools and parks across the country . Here are a few things worth hump about the 31st chair , Herbert Hoover .
1. HE WAS ORPHANED AT AGE 9.
Hoover ’s Fatherhood , a Quaker bring up Jesse Clark Hoover , mold as a blacksmith and farm equipment salesmanin West Branch , Iowauntil he pass away on the spur of the moment of a kernel attack in 1880 , when Herbert was 6 . After his female parent , Hulda Minthorn Hoover , croak a little over three years later from typhoid and pneumonia , Herbert , his older brother Theodore , and younger baby Mary lived with various congenator until Herbert was sent to live with an uncle , Dr. Henry John Minthorn , in Oregon .
Hoover leave shoal at 15 and worked as an office assistant for Minthorn ’s Oregon Land Company , and , in the evening , take care classes at the Capital Business College . Later , determined to attend the new established Leland Stanford Junior University in California and become an engineer , Hoover took the shoal ’s entrance exam and failed , but because a professor noted he had promise , Hooverwas conditionally acceptedand became a student in the inaugural 1891 class .
2. HE MADE A FORTUNE IN MINING.
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After majoring in geology at Stanford and graduate in 1895 , Hoover contend to find a task as a surveyor and went to employment labor ore go-cart at a gilded mine near Nevada City , California . In 1897 , Hoover moved to Australia to function as a mining engineer , then went to China two years afterward , marrying his wife , Lou Henry , the day before they start out for China .
Between 1901 and 1914 , Hoover and his family move and worked around the public on four continents and in more than 40 countries . He became a collaborator with London - based mining party Bewick , Moreing & Co. , director of the Chinese Engineering and Mining Corporation ( CEMC ) , and laminitis of the Zinc Corporation before becoming an sovereign mining advisor and amassing a personal fortune of $ 4 million ( about $ 95 million in today ’s money ) by 1914 .
3. THE HOOVERS GOT CAUGHT IN THE BOXER REBELLION.
At a time of intense ferment and international tension , the Hoovers live in Tientsin ( or Tianjin ) , in northerly China , while he work as an engineer and executive with the CEMC . drouth , floods , suspicion of missionaries and outlander , and government reform lead to political rebellion that ensnare the newlywed Hoovers . Their house was coin by shelling in June 1900 , and the walled chemical compound they stayed in with other foreigners was beleaguer for more than three weeks by attacks .
Hoover , with his engine room insightfulness , helped direct the construction of barricade along the compound walls , while Lou tended to the offend and delivered milk to a makeshift hospital on her cycle , which once had its tyre puncture by a slug . But she seemed unfazed by the conflict andwrote to a champion , “ You should have been there … at the most interesting siege and bombardment of the age . You missed one of the chance of your life sentence by not follow to China in the summer of 1900 . ”
4. HE BECAME KNOWN AS “THE GREAT HUMANITARIAN” DURING WORLD WAR I.
The Hoovers lived in London at the outset of World War I , and Hoover later commented that the irruption of warfare in Europechanged his life : “ I did not realize it at the moment , but on August 3 , 1914 , my engineering calling was over always . I was on the slippery road of public life . ” He do , in six workweek , for the excretion of 120,000 Americans trapped in war - buck Europe , and he later became Chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium , which bring up millions of dollar sign and furnish nutrient , medicine and supplies for more than 9 million Belgian and French citizens after Germany obtrude upon .
In 1917 , President Woodrow Wilson name Hoover to escape the U.S. Food Administration to help economise American resources demand for the state of war effort . The termHooverize , a phrase used by Americans to connote rationing consumer goods , made him a home name . Wilson name Hoover the head of the American Relief Administration after the decision of the state of war in 1918 and he helped send 34 million net ton of intellectual nourishment , clothing , and supplies to Europe . He also expand aid to shortage - stricken Russia in 1921 , and call down a critic of this aid , tell , “ Twenty million mass are thirst . Whatever their politics , they must be fed ! ”
5. HE PARTICIPATED IN THE FIRST LONG-DISTANCE TELEVISION BROADCAST.
Hoover served as Secretary of Commerce under Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge from 1921 to 1928 , puddle him the last President to have hold a full cabinet position . In this office he became a pop and visible member of the governance , which open up a historic opportunity for him . On April 7 , 1927 , Hoovergave a speechfrom Washington , D.C. He attend into a little black box and speak into a phone receiver for an experiment channel by Bell Laboratories . This moving effigy was beam more than 200 mile aside to Whippany , New Jersey and then on to the AT&T offices in Manhattan , make Hoover the first mortal to appear on a long - distance tv set broadcast .
ANew York Timesstoryrecalled , “ It was as if a exposure had do to life and begun to talk , smile , nod its header and look this way and that . ” The broadcast was marred , in hindsight , by the appearance of vaudeville comedian A. Dolan , who first give a public presentation as a stereotype of an Irish - American , made a spry costume change , and then returned in blackface . Hoover , however , gloss on the scientific significance of the event , secern reporter , “ Human genius has now destroy the balk of length . ”
6. THE PRESIDENCY WAS HIS FIRST ELECTED OFFICE.
Hoover made an abbreviated rill at the presidency in 1920 , but he never explicitly agreed to or enter in the abbreviated crusade . The mostly nonpartizan Hoover move into the raceway in California largely on the issue of joining the League of Nations , something Hoover was for but fellow Progressive Republican Hiram Johnson was vehemently against . After Johnson win the California primary , Hoover left the wash . Hoover was appointed Secretary of Commerce under Harding and after seven year give the White House another shot . His internal popularity had peaked after he took commission of relief efforts following implosion therapy along the Mississippi River in 1927 , and when Coolidge announcedhe would n’t try reelection , Hoover became the lead Republican nominee — although he hadonce said“the whole musical theme ” of a political campaign filled him “ with arrant revulsion . ”
Although the company leadership did n’t altogether commit Hoover , he had gain ground enough primary by the prison term of the Republican convention in Kansas City in the summertime of 1928 to assure the financial backing of multiple constituency and the important imprimatur of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon . In the general election he easy defeated New York Governor Alfred E. Smith with 444 electoral right to vote to Smith ’s 87 , and 58 percent of the popular vote .
7. HE LOST TO FDR AND BECAME ONE OF HIS BIGGEST CRITICS.
Historians have comment on Hoover ’s unfortunate timing and inadequate policy as president , as he took office just a few months before the stock food market crash of 1929 . Even the Great Engineer could n’t figure out a manner to turn around the economy . The Hawley - Smoot Tariff bill did n’t work ; the Agricultural Marketing Act did nothing ; his voluntary , non - governmental approach to political economy give out to stimulate consumption and product ; and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was unsuccessful in stabilize the fiscal sphere . Americans rallied around Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal promise , and he knocked out Hoover with 57 percent of the popular balloting and a walloping 472 - 59 electoral suffrage bound .
Becoming the scapegoat for the Great Depression did n’t baby-sit well with Hoover , and heblasted his successor ’s policies and ideology . Hoover also felt Roosevelt jabbed him with personal slights . Hoover ’s request for Secret Service shelter was traverse , and he believed FDR fed negative narrative to the printing press that close up his fundraising effort to help Finland in its fight with Russia .
Many of Hoover ’s knock on Roosevelt have not aged well . His main criticisms have-to doe with the “ gospel of dictatorship ” surrounding the support of the New Deal . He even equate what was happening in America to event in Europe , namely that“this Administration is steady develop the same emergence of personal big businessman that has broom the domain into Nazism and Fascism . ”
Hoover did n’t just guess about politics , though . He continued his human-centered work and wrote extensively , includingThe Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson , the first biography of one President of the United States written by another , andFishing for Fun – And to moisten Your Soul . He also helped in the restoration efforts in postwar Europe , before passing away in New York at the old age of 90 on October 20 , 1964 .
