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WHEN HE WAS BORN
Herbert Clark Hoover was born on August 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa–the first U.S. president to be born west of the Mississippi River. He was the second of three children in a family of Quakers, who valued honesty, industriousness and simplicity. His father, Jesse Clark Hoover (1846-80), worked as a blacksmith, and his mother, Hulda Minthorn Hoover (1848-84), was a teacher. Orphaned at age nine, Hoover was raised primarily by an uncle in Oregon. -
The Star-Spangled Banner America's national anthem
On March 3, 1931, President Herbert Hoover signed a law that made "The Star-Spangled Banner," based on an 1814 poem by Francis Scott Key (1779-1843), America's national anthem.