66 Fun Facts About Barack Obama

In which city was Barack Obama born?

Honolulu: two local newspapers printed Obama's birth notice in August 1961, records later cited against claims that he was born abroad.

A 2002 Obama speech opposed only which kind of war?

Dumb: Obama spoke at an October 2002 Chicago rally against invading Iraq, and in 2008 he contrasted that stand with a rival's vote for the war.

His mother, Ann Dunham, was born in which state?

Kansas: Ann Dunham was born in Wichita and met Obama's father when both were students at the University of Hawaii.

His father was a citizen of which African country?

Kenya: Barack Obama Sr. departed for graduate study in 1962, then returned home to work as a government economist.

Barack Obama has said his father grew up herding which animals?

Goats: his father went from herding them as a village boy to a graduate degree and a career shaping his nation's economy.

At age six, Barack Obama went to live in which country, his stepfather's homeland?

Indonesia: Obama attended local schools in Jakarta from age six to ten, and his mother later returned there for anthropology fieldwork.

What nickname did Barack Obama go by as a boy?

Barry: Obama kept the nickname through high school, then dropped it and began using his given name, Barack.

In 1971, Barack Obama moved back to Hawaii to live with which relatives?

His maternal grandparents: Stanley and Madelyn Dunham raised him from age ten so he could attend school in Hawaii while his mother worked abroad.

Which private Hawaiian school did Barack Obama attend on a scholarship from fifth grade until graduating in 1979?

Punahou School: Obama later wrote that as a teenager there he used alcohol and drugs to push questions of who he was out of his mind.

Barack Obama began his undergraduate studies in 1979 at which Los Angeles school?

Occidental College: Obama spent his freshman and sophomore years there before transferring east to finish his degree.

His first public speech, in February 1981, called for his college to do what?

The anti-apartheid rally speech is recounted in his memoir; he was pulled offstage mid-sentence as a piece of theater.

Where did Barack Obama earn his bachelor's degree in political science in 1983?

Columbia University: Obama transferred there after two years at a Los Angeles college, and after graduating he moved to Chicago in 1985.

From 1985 to 1988, Barack Obama worked in Chicago in what job?

Community organizer: Obama worked for the church-funded Developing Communities Project, then went on to law school in 1988.

In July 2008, candidate Barack Obama drew a huge crowd to an outdoor speech in which European city?

Berlin: speaking to about 200,000 people at the Victory Column, Obama called for renewed ties between the United States and its allies.

Barack Obama gained national attention in 1990 as the first Black president of what?

The Harvard Law Review: the publicity from his election brought Obama a publishing contract for a book about race relations.

What subject did Barack Obama teach at the University of Chicago Law School?

Constitutional law: the school repeatedly invited Obama to join its full-time tenure-track faculty, but he declined.

Which voter-registration drive did Barack Obama direct in Illinois in 1992?

Project Vote: the 1992 drive was credited with helping elect Carol Moseley Braun to the US Senate that November.

Whose sermons prompted Obama's 2008 speech on race?

Jeremiah Wright: Obama denounced the remarks but refused to disown him, then resigned from Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ in May 2008.

What is the given first name of Barack Obama's younger daughter, known as Sasha?

Natasha: Sasha Obama was born in 2001, and the family stayed in Washington after 2017 so she could finish high school.

Barack Obama was first elected to public office in 1996, winning a seat in which body?

The Illinois State Senate: Obama's challenges to rival candidates' nominating petitions knocked them off the ballot, leaving him alone in the Democratic primary.

In 2000, Barack Obama lost a Democratic primary for the US House to which incumbent?

Bobby Rush: he cast Obama as an outsider to the district's Black neighborhoods and beat him by more than 2 to 1.

In which city did Barack Obama give the 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote that made his name?

Boston: Obama wrote the speech largely himself, and the Kerry campaign's edits kept most of his draft intact.

Which phrase from Barack Obama's 2004 convention keynote became the title of his 2006 book?

The Audacity of Hope: Obama borrowed the phrase from a sermon, and his 2006 book of that title became a national bestseller.

Who was Barack Obama's main rival in the 2008 Democratic primary?

Hillary Clinton: she battled Obama from February into June 2008, then served as his secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

Whom did Barack Obama defeat in the November 2008 general election?

John McCain: Obama beat the Arizona senator 365 electoral votes to 173, after McCain chose Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Which park hosted Obama's 2008 victory speech?

Grant Park: forty years earlier, police had clashed there with protesters during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Who administered the oath of office at Barack Obama's first inauguration in January 2009?

Chief Justice John Roberts: he misplaced the word 'faithfully', so he gave Obama the oath again the next day in the White House Map Room.

What was the first bill Barack Obama signed into law, on January 29, 2009?

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: it lets the 180-day deadline for pay-discrimination suits restart with each unfair paycheck, after Ledbetter lost at the Supreme Court.

Which stimulus law did Obama sign in 2009?

The Recovery Act: not one House Republican and only three Republican senators voted for the stimulus package.

In December 2009, in which city did Barack Obama accept the Nobel Peace Prize?

Oslo: Obama called his accomplishments slight beside laureates like King and Mandela, then argued that force is sometimes morally justified.

In which city did Barack Obama deliver 'A New Beginning', his June 2009 speech to the Muslim world?

Cairo: Obama quoted the Quran, the Talmud and the Bible in the speech, which Cairo University hosted with Al-Azhar University.

In 2012, the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare's individual mandate as what?

A tax: the 5-4 ruling rejected the argument that Congress could require people to buy insurance under its power to regulate commerce.

Which justice was Barack Obama's first Supreme Court appointee, confirmed in 2009?

Sonia Sotomayor: the Bronx housing project where she spent part of her childhood was renamed in her honor in 2010.

What breed was Bo, the Obama family's pet?

Portuguese Water Dog: Malia's allergies led the Obamas to a breed with a hypoallergenic reputation, and they added a second one, Sunny, in 2013.

Which senator gave the Obamas their dog Bo?

Ted Kennedy: the senator's gift made good on Obama's election-night promise to his daughters of a new puppy coming with them to the White House.

Bo was named partly after their cousins' cat and partly after which musician?

Bo Diddley: the name also nodded to Michelle Obama's father, who had gone by the nickname Diddley.

In which Pakistani city was Osama bin Laden killed in the May 2011 raid?

Abbottabad: US intelligence found bin Laden's compound there by tracking one of his trusted couriers.

What was the code name of the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden?

Operation Neptune Spear: the raid team's use of 'Geronimo' as a code word outraged some Native Americans.

In 2011, Barack Obama joined NATO allies in air strikes to protect civilians in which country?

Libya: the NATO-backed campaign helped rebels end Muammar Gaddafi's rule, and Gaddafi was killed in October 2011.

Who was Barack Obama's Republican opponent in the 2012 election?

Mitt Romney: the former Massachusetts governor picked Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate, and Obama won 332 electoral votes to 206.

Which program did Barack Obama announce in June 2012 to shield immigrants brought to the US as children from deportation?

DACA: Obama created it by executive action after Congress failed to pass legislation for young immigrants brought to the country as children.

Barack Obama's 2016 trip to Cuba was the first by a sitting US president since whose 1928 visit?

Calvin Coolidge: Obama's trip followed the restoration of full diplomatic relations, with embassies reopening in both capitals in July 2015.

In which city was the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) finalized in July 2015?

Vienna: the deal was announced there on July 14, 2015, and President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from it in May 2018.

Barack Obama's 2016 Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland was chosen to succeed which justice?

Antonin Scalia: Senate Republicans refused to hold hearings, and Garland's nomination expired in January 2017 after 293 days.

Barack Obama was the first sitting president to publicly support what?

Same-sex marriage: Obama affirmed his support in a May 2012 interview, and three years later the Supreme Court legalized it in all 50 states.

Where did Barack Obama deliver his January 2017 farewell address, rather than from the White House?

McCormick Place in Chicago: Obama called Michelle, a 'girl of the South Side', his best friend, and closed with 'Yes, we can. Yes, we did.'

What is the title of Barack Obama's 1995 memoir?

Dreams from My Father: first published in 1995, it was reissued after Obama's 2004 convention keynote and became a bestseller.

Barack Obama won Grammy Awards in 2006 and 2008 in which category?

Best Spoken Word Album: both wins were for narrating his own books, the second coming in the middle of his first presidential campaign.

He won a 2022 Primetime Emmy for narrating which Netflix series?

The award made him one of the few people to hold an Emmy, two Grammys and a Nobel Prize.

What is the name of the production company Barack and Michelle Obama founded in 2018?

Higher Ground: the company launched with a multi-year Netflix deal and went on to produce nature and work series that Obama himself narrates.

Which documentary won the Obamas' company an Academy Award in 2020?

American Factory: its directors had already filmed the same Ohio plant's closing in their 2009 short The Last Truck.

What was Barack Obama's Secret Service code name?

Renegade: family code names traditionally share a first letter, so Michelle's was Renaissance and Sasha's was Rosebud.

Which hand does Barack Obama write with?

Left: Obama joins Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton as a lefty president, though Ronald Reagan, naturally left-handed, wrote with his right hand.

Barack Obama played on his high school varsity team in which sport?

Basketball: when Michelle began dating Barack, she asked her brother Craig to play a game with him and report on his character.

In which South Side park did Barack Obama build his presidential center?

Jackson Park: a lawsuit to stop building on the parkland reached the Supreme Court, which refused to block construction in 2021.

Michelle Obama earned her undergraduate degree from which university?

Princeton: Michelle Robinson followed her brother there, majoring in sociology with a minor in African-American studies.

What was the name of Michelle Obama's initiative against childhood obesity?

Let's Move! championed the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which required more fruit, vegetables and whole grains in school meals.

What is the title of Michelle Obama's 2018 memoir?

Becoming launched with an arena tour that opened at Chicago's United Center, with Oprah Winfrey moderating the conversation.

Which Republican replaced Jack Ryan as Obama's opponent in the 2004 US Senate race in Illinois?

Ryan withdrew in June 2004 amid a scandal; Keyes, a Maryland resident, accepted the nomination six weeks later and lost in a landslide.

Which street artist created the famous 'Hope' poster of Barack Obama?

Shepard Fairey sold 350 prints and pasted 350 more on the streets, then used the sales to fund 4,000 posters for Obama rallies.

Which Major League Baseball team does Barack Obama support?

The Chicago White Sox have his loyalty, but Michelle is a lifelong Cubs fan, and in January 2017 he welcomed the champion Cubs to the White House.

Which retiring justice did Elena Kagan replace when Obama nominated her in May 2010?

John Paul Stevens was appointed by Republican president Gerald Ford, yet over time he emerged as a leader of the court's liberal wing.

Which comedian appeared beside Obama as Luther, his 'anger translator', at the 2015 White House Correspondents' Dinner?

Keegan-Michael Key's Luther, from Key & Peele, turns the president's calm words into furious rants, and Obama played along live on stage.

Which drink did Obama share with Henry Louis Gates Jr. and his arresting officer at a White House 'summit'?

Beer, eight days after Obama said police had acted 'stupidly' in arresting Gates, and Joe Biden joined in with a non-alcoholic Buckler.

In which city was the 2012 Democratic National Convention that renominated Obama and Biden held?

Charlotte, North Carolina hosted it, yet that November Obama lost North Carolina, a state he had carried in 2008 by about 14,000 votes.

Which Obama half-brother was Donald Trump's guest at the final 2016 debate?

Malik Obama had endorsed Trump in July 2016, and Trump said Malik 'gets it far better than his brother'.