Did his friends call him "Herb"?

Herbert Hoover was born this date in 1874. A famous mining engineer before he was president, he designed a system that was so efficient at clearing stray bits of coal that even today in England "hoover" is a verb for a prodigious cleaning effort, as in "he hoovered those chocolates."

Missouri entered the union on this date in 1821; the same day, someone in Illinois invented the first joke about cousin marriage in Missouri.

On this date in 1996, Bob Dole picked Jack Kemp as his running mate after Kemp correctly answered the question of whether Dole wore boxers or briefs ("Depends.")

In 1960, Joe met his mom.