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 Thomas F. Schwartz A previous blog described Christmas gifts Lou Henry Hoover gave to people in 1930. Made from century-old pine beams original to the White House and removed in the 1927 renovation by Calvin Coolidge, some of the oral histories conducted with associates of Herbert Hoover conflate these gifts with the 1929 fire … Continue reading The Oval Office Roasting on a 1929 Christmas Fire
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 where the battle … Continue reading Christmas in Vienna, 1920 – Part 3: Caring for the children
In December 1920, as Coningsby Dawson toured Central Europe writing articles to promote the American Relief Administration fund drive, he sought to inform his readers about not only the immediate work of the ARA, but also to offer a wider view of the newly independent nations that were struggling to recover from the war. In this … Continue reading Christmas in Vienna, 1920 – Part 2: The Dorotheum
The year 2018 marked the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War I. As far as most Americans were concerned, that was the end of the war – the fighting stopped, the doughboys soon came home, and the Versailles Peace Conference concluded an acceptable peace. In much of Europe, the Armistice brought no … Continue reading Christmas in Vienna, 1920 — Part 1: A visit from Santa
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
Just over 80 years ago, Walt Disney released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature length cel animated film, which quickly became both a critical and commercial success. While still popular today, Snow White may seem somewhat quaint compared with more recent animated films, but at the time it was truly revolutionary. Nothing … Continue reading Movie Review – Snow White
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
