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50 free Herbert Hoover trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Hoover was which number president of the United States?
31st
He served a single term, 1929 to 1933, sandwiched between Calvin Coolidge and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Q 02In which state was Hoover born?
Iowa
He was born in West Branch in 1874 and is buried there beside his presidential library.
Q 03Hoover was raised in which religious tradition?
Quaker
After being orphaned he was sent to Newberg, Oregon, another frontier town settled largely by Midwestern Quakers.
Q 04Hoover was a member of the first graduating class of which university?
Stanford
He got into the "Pioneer Class" in 1891 despite failing every entrance exam except mathematics.
Q 05Hoover made his fortune in which profession?
Mining engineer
He earned a reputation as a "doctor of sick mines" and was worth about $4 million by 1914.
Q 06Hoover's first job abroad was running gold mines on which continent?
Australia
He described the goldfields around Coolgardie as a land of "black flies, red dust and white heat".
Q 07The Hoovers were trapped in China by which uprising shortly after arriving?
Boxer Rebellion
He had come to develop gold mines near Tianjin; a multinational force lifted the siege at the Battle of Tientsin.
Q 08Hoover and his wife published the first English translation of which 16th-century work?
De re metallica
Georgius Agricola's treatise on mining and metallurgy appealed to Hoover's interest in the history of science.
Q 09During World War I, Hoover headed a relief commission feeding which occupied country?
Belgium
The commission became a virtual republic of relief with its own flag, navy, factories, mills and railroads.
Q 10Which president appointed Hoover to lead the U.S. Food Administration in 1917?
Woodrow Wilson
Hoover became known as the nation's "food czar" and pushed meatless Mondays and wheatless Wednesdays.
Q 11Government publicists dubbed voluntary wartime food saving what?
Hooverizing
Hoover kept ordering publicity not to mention him by name, and they kept ignoring him.
Q 12After WWI, Hoover's relief administration famously fed famine victims in which country?
Russia
Asked if he was aiding Bolshevism, he replied, "twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!"
Q 13Which Soviet writer told Hoover his help would enter history as a "gigantic achievement"?
Maxim Gorky
The Russian famine of 1921–22 killed six million; the ARA likely saved millions more.
Q 21What did Coolidge say Hoover had given him for six years — "all of it bad"?
Unsolicited advice
Coolidge still declined to oppose his popular Commerce Secretary for fear of splitting the party.
Q 22What share of the popular vote did Hoover win in 1928?
58 percent
Four years later his share plunged by 18.6 points to under 40 percent.
Q 23The stock market crashed in which month of Hoover's first year in office?
October 1929
Hoover tried to put a positive spin on Black Tuesday and asked business leaders to avoid wage cuts.
Q 14Hoover served as Secretary of Commerce under which two presidents?
Harding and Coolidge
Colleagues called him "Secretary of Commerce and Under-Secretary of all other departments".
Q 15As Commerce Secretary, Hoover helped pass a 1927 act regulating which new medium?
Radio
Families with sets grew from 300,000 in 1923 to 10 million by 1929 during his tenure.
Q 16Which 1927 natural disaster did Hoover coordinate the federal response to?
Great Mississippi Flood
He set up over a hundred tent cities and raised $17 million, and by 1928 was overshadowing Coolidge himself.
Q 17Whom did Hoover defeat in a landslide in the 1928 presidential election?
Al Smith
Smith was the first Catholic major-party nominee; Hoover took 444 of 531 electoral votes and cracked the Solid South.
Q 18Who was Hoover's vice president?
Charles Curtis
Delegates considered renominating Dawes, but Coolidge, who hated him, called that "a personal affront".
Q 19Where did Hoover accept the 1928 Republican nomination?
Stanford Stadium
He told the huge crowd he would continue the policies of Harding and Coolidge.
Q 20What phrase did Hoover use in 1928 to contrast America with European "state socialism"?
Rugged individualism
He saw the post-war choice as between individual enterprise and the "paternalism" of government ownership.
Q 24Which tariff act did Hoover sign in June 1930 over economists' objections?
Smoot–Hawley
Canada, France and others retaliated, trade contracted, and progressive Republicans never forgave him.
Q 25What were 1930s shanty towns nicknamed?
Hoovervilles
A "Hoover blanket" was an old newspaper and "Hoover leather" was cardboard patching a shoe sole.
Q 26What did the epithet "Hoover leather" refer to?
Cardboard in worn shoe soles
The insults piled up as unemployment climbed from 11.9 percent in 1930 to nearly 23 percent by early 1932.
Q 27In 1932 Hoover created which agency to lend to banks, railroads and local governments?
Reconstruction Finance Corporation
It saved many businesses but its conservative bankers were too cautious to revive commercial lending.
Q 28The 1931 one-year suspension of European war-debt payments is known as what?
Hoover Moratorium
It was welcomed on both sides of the Atlantic, but Germany stayed on the brink of default.
Q 29Hoover refused to abandon which monetary system, calling alternatives "collectivism"?
The gold standard
Other countries left it during 1931; Britain's departure that September was a turning point.
Q 30The Revenue Act of 1932 raised the top income tax rate to what?
63 percent
It rolled back much of Mellon's 1920s tax cuts; a proposed sales tax was defeated in the House 211–178.