Barack Obama was the most recent President to smoke cigarettes. He did his best to keep his habit out of the public eye knowing that it was frowned upon. Before the habit was socially stigmatized, many Presidents smoked. Herbert Hoover was one of them. A recent reference question concerning Hoover’s choice in pipe tobacco led … Continue reading Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
by Spencer Howard Continuing Coningsby Dawson's tour of post-World War I Vienna, his writings sought to convey the absolute desperation of the people – primarily children – who were dependent on the American Relief Administration. In this dispatch, he describes his visit to one of the child-feeding stations: Today I visited one of the strategic points … Continue reading Christmas in Vienna, 1920 – Part 3: Caring for the children
This third installment in the saga of Hoover’s ties with American Presidents gets tricky. Hoover’s connections to Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft were small, self-contained universes which allowed for easy translation into a blog post. This is not the case with Hoover and Woodrow Wilson. Their contacts were frequent, their engagement deep, their conjoined … Continue reading Herbert Hoover and American Presidents of the 20th century, Part 3
By Thomas F. Schwartz During the season of goblins, ghosts, witches, vampires, and zombies, “invisible guests” would find themselves among friends. But invisibility can be the spiteful kind as in H. G. Welles, Invisible Man or something that is not present but felt. It is the latter that Herbert Hoover evoked in a series of … Continue reading The Invisible Guest
The early 1930s were not good years for Arkansas. Parts of the state were still struggling to recover from the massive Mississippi River Flood of 1927. Arkansas was also at the center of a severe drought in 1930 which withered crops in the field, leading to a devastatingly bad harvest. Crop failures led to widespread … Continue reading Thanksgiving Proclamation-Arkansas, 1931
While every region has its natural collegiate rivals in football—think Auburn-Alabama, Michigan-Ohio State, Texas-Oklahoma—only one rivalry comes complete with capital letters. The Stanford-Cal Big Game [always capitalized by the cognoscenti] dates back to 1892, when Walter Camp coached the Stanford team to a 14-10 victory over their rivals across the bay. As a student, … Continue reading Stanford-Cal Big Game
At the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month in the year 1918, church bells rang out across Europe. They rang to celebrate the armistice which ended more than four years of grueling total warfare on the continent. The erstwhile combatants hoped that they could negotiate an enduring peace. This would … Continue reading The End of the Great War
by Matthew Schaefer During his fifty years of public service, Herbert Hoover wrote at least one million letters. Carbon copies of these letters constitute the bulk of the Herbert Hoover papers. Most of the letters from his later years are terse, honed by long practice to speak only to the point. Hoover’s prose in these … Continue reading From the Herbert Hoover Snark-ives
by Spencer Howard At his news conference on March 22, 1929, President Hoover announced that he had ordered the Presidential yacht, USS Mayflower, decommissioned. He explained, "The Secretary of the Navy reports that it costs over $300,000 a year to maintain the yacht and that it requires a complement of 9 officers and 148 enlisted … Continue reading When is a yacht not a yacht?
Groucho and Other Solicitations Made to an Ex-President. By Thomas F. Schwartz It was not uncommon in the Nineteenth Century for sitting and former presidents to publically endorse commercial products and services, usually without compensation. In 1862, Abraham Lincoln wrote a glowing endorsement for his foot doctor: “Dr. Zacharie, has, with great dexterity, taken some … Continue reading Who’s Buried in Grant’s Tomb?
