Clarification on our recent Hoover Letter

A few weeks ago we shared a letter from President Hoover written during his lame-duck period. We wrote in the context “Hoover took office on March 4th, 1929. On March 25th, the stock market crashed and the United States was on its way to economic panic”. Some astute readers wrote in to point out that the famous crash of 1929 took place on October 29th (otherwise known as Black Tuesday).

The reason we focused on the smaller March 25th crash is that it happened so shortly after Hoover’s inauguration, precipitating four years of economic uncertainty that overlapped almost perfectly with his Presidency. It wasn’t a factual error on our part, but we should have mentioned Black Tuesday as well in our discussion of the Great Depression.

To everyone that wrote in, thank you for caring, and please do continue to write in to call us out whenever we make mistakes (It does happen). We especially love handwritten letters and postcards, a few of which we received on this particular topic.

All the best,

Michael Sitver

Founder - Letterjoy