Wars, politics & history

Death of Herbert Hoover

20 October 1964

Herbert Hoover died on 20 October 1964 in Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (New York, N.Y.), aged 90. The 31st President of the United States, Hoover was a mining engineer who became wealthy before entering public service. During the First World War he organized food relief in Belgium and directed the American Food Administration, and he later served as secretary of commerce. He won the presidency in 1928, but the stock market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression overshadowed his term. His efforts to respond, which emphasized voluntary cooperation and limited federal action, were widely regarded as inadequate, and he lost heavily to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. He remained active afterward, leading commissions to reorganize the federal government.

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