Erin ’s Reviews > Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times > Status Update

Prior to the war Belgium had been a thriving nation of 7.5 million, the 6th largest economy in the world.

News that a Serbian nationalist had assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, made no impression on Hoover. He believed it was just a regional affair.

Future First Lady Lou Henry was raised by her father to consider herself the equal of any man.

Engineering was an exciting profession in the late Victorian era, a time of railroads and steamships, heavy industry, and transatlantic cables, man-made canals, steel skyscrapers and an endless array of new patents and processes.

None of Hoover's Sanford classmates would have selected him as the most likely among them to succeed.

Hoover was all but mute on his emotional reaction to having been orphaned at age 9.

Hoover was conceived during the Panic of 1873, an international depression that produced an estimated 14% unemployment rate across the United States with 18,000 business failures over 2 years.