RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) –<\/p>\n
Leading up to America\u2019s 250th birthday this Summer, we are revealing things you may not know about our presidents.<\/p>\n
He was the first president born west of the Mississippi River who took a lot of the blame for the Great Depression.<\/p>\n
Herbert Hoover was born on August 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa. He was orphaned at 9-years-old and was raised by an uncle in Oregon.<\/p>\n
Hoover was a member of the first graduating class at Stanford University in 1895, earning a degree in Geology. He traveled the World as a mining engineer. A career that made him a millionaire. He married Lou Henry in 1899. The couple had two children.<\/p>\n
His humanitarian work at the start of World War I helped more than 100,000 American tourists stranded in Europe return to the U.S. and supplied Belgians with food after the German invasion.<\/p>\n
When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, President Wilson appointed Hoover the head of the Food Administration, an agency that provided food & clothing to Allied Forces. <\/p>\n
After the war, Hoover served as Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge. He organized the radio and civilian aviation industries and was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the construction of a massive dam that would be named the Hoover Dam when it opened in 1936.<\/p>\n
In the election of 1928, Hoover carried 40 states to defeat the democrat with a 444 to 87 electoral vote margin.<\/p>\n
But seven months into his term in the White House, the stock market crash of 1929 started the Great Depression. Banks and businesses failed. Employment rose to 23 percent in 1933. There were bread lines. Hoover\u2019s response made the economic disaster worse. He believed in limited government, and intervention by the Fed would be a threat to capitalism. He vetoed bills that would have provided relief to struggling Americans. <\/p>\n
Hoover was so disliked and unpopular, he was easily defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the election of 1932.<\/p>\n
After he left office, Hoover served on commissions for government efficiency for Presidents Truman and Eisenhower.<\/p>\n
Herbert Hoover lived to be 90-years-old. He died in 1964 in New York City.<\/p>\n
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