70 Fun Facts About Barack Obama

In which city was Barack Obama born?

He was born at Kapiolani Medical Center on August 4, 1961, two years after Hawaii became a state.

In which year was he born?

He is the first president born outside the contiguous 48 states.

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

Dunham later became an anthropologist specializing in Indonesian village crafts and microfinance.

His father was a citizen of which African country?

Barack Obama Sr. was a Luo from Nyang'oma Kogelo who came to Hawaii on a scholarship and later worked as an economist.

After his parents divorced, how often did his father visit him in Hawaii?

That month-long visit is the only memory Obama has of his father, who died in a car accident in Kenya in 1982.

At age six he moved with his mother and stepfather to which country?

He spoke the language fluently as a child and attended both a Catholic and a public school in Jakarta.

Under what nickname was he registered at school as a boy?

He kept the nickname through high school and dropped it in college, asking friends to use his full name.

From 1971 he lived back in Hawaii with which relatives?

Madelyn Dunham, a bank vice president he called 'Toot', died two days before he was elected president.

Which private Hawaiian academy did he attend on a scholarship from fifth grade until graduating in 1979?

He played on the school's varsity basketball team, which won the state championship in his senior year.

Where did he begin his undergraduate studies in 1979, on a full scholarship in Los Angeles?

He spent two years there before transferring east.

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 he earn his 1983 bachelor's degree in political science?

He specialized in international relations and wrote his thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament.

From 1985 to 1988 he worked in Chicago in what job?

He was paid about $13,000 a year by a church-based group working in the Roseland and Altgeld Gardens neighborhoods.

In which Chicago public-housing development did he help set up job training and tenants' rights programs?

The far-South Side project sits beside landfills, and asbestos removal there was one of his first organizing wins.

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

The publicity led to a book contract, which eventually became his 1995 memoir.

In which year did he graduate from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude?

He turned down big-firm offers to return to Chicago and run a voter-registration drive.

What subject did he teach at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years?

He was a lecturer and then senior lecturer, never a tenured professor, though the school said he was offered a full-time post.

In 1992 he directed Illinois's Project Vote, which registered how many new African American voters?

The drive helped Carol Moseley Braun become the first Black woman elected to the US Senate that November.

At which law firm did he meet Michelle Robinson in 1989?

He was a summer associate and she was assigned to mentor him; their first date included the movie Do the Right Thing.

In which year did Barack and Michelle marry?

The wedding was at Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side, with Jeremiah Wright officiating.

What is the given first name of his younger daughter, known as Sasha?

Malia Ann was born in 1998; both girls were school-age when the family moved into the White House.

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

He got on the ballot by successfully challenging the petition signatures of every rival, including the incumbent.

In 2000 he lost a Democratic primary for the US House to which incumbent?

Rush, a former Black Panther, beat him by more than 30 points; it remains Obama's only electoral defeat.

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

He was still a state senator at the time, running for the US Senate; the speech was given at the FleetCenter.

Which word fills the blanks in 'there is not a liberal ___ and a conservative ___ — there is the United States of ___'?

He went on to reject the idea of a Black, white, Latino and Asian America, a theme he returned to in his farewell address twelve years later.

Who was his main rival in the 2008 Democratic primary?

The contest ran into June; he later made her his first Secretary of State.

Whom did he defeat in the November 2008 general election?

McCain's running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, became a national figure overnight.

How many electoral votes did he win in 2008?

He carried Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina, states no Democrat had won since the 1960s or 1970s.

What share of the popular vote did he win in 2008?

It was the largest share for any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

Who administered the oath of office at his first inauguration in January 2009?

Roberts flubbed the wording, so the two redid the oath privately in the White House the next day.

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

It reset the statute of limitations on pay-discrimination claims after Ledbetter lost her own case at the Supreme Court.

How large was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus of 2009?

It mixed tax cuts, infrastructure spending and aid to states; later estimates put its final cost above $830 billion.

In which year was he awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

He had been in office less than nine months and admitted he did not feel he deserved to be in the company of past winners.

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

He spoke at Cairo University, with the ancient Al-Azhar University co-hosting.

The Affordable Care Act was signed into law in which month and year?

The Supreme Court upheld its individual mandate as a tax in 2012.

Which of his Supreme Court appointees became the first Hispanic American justice?

He appointed her in 2009 and Elena Kagan in 2010; a third nomination in 2016 never got a hearing.

What breed was Bo, the Obama family dog?

The family needed a hypoallergenic breed because Malia is allergic; Bo died of cancer in 2021 at age 12.

Which senator gave the Obamas their dog Bo?

Kennedy owned the same breed; Bo moved into the White House on April 14, 2009.

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

His registered kennel name was Amigo's New Hope.

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

The compound sat less than a mile from Pakistan's military academy; one Black Hawk crashed during the insertion without casualties.

What was the code name of the bin Laden raid?

The name nods to the Navy SEAL trident; 'Geronimo' was the code word for bin Laden himself.

In 2011 he ordered US military intervention in which country?

The NATO campaign ended with the fall of Muammar Gaddafi; Obama later called failing to plan for the aftermath his worst mistake.

Who was his Republican opponent in the 2012 election?

He became the first president since Dwight Eisenhower to win two elections with more than 51 percent of the vote.

In which year did he announce the DACA program for immigrants brought to the US as children?

Recipients are often called Dreamers, after the DREAM Act that Congress repeatedly failed to pass.

His 2016 trip to Cuba was the first by a sitting US president since whom?

The thaw was mediated by Pope Francis and hosted by Canada; embassies reopened in July 2015.

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

The United States withdrew from the pact in 2018.

His 2016 Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland was chosen to succeed which justice?

The Senate never held a hearing and the nomination expired after 293 days, the first such refusal since the Civil War.

He was the first sitting president to publicly support what?

He announced the shift in a May 2012 interview, days after Joe Biden got ahead of him on the issue.

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

The convention center is a few miles from Grant Park, where he had given his 2008 victory speech.

What is the title of his 1995 memoir?

It sold modestly until his 2004 keynote, then became a bestseller.

His two Grammy Awards were won in which category?

Both were for reading the audiobooks of his first two books; Michelle later won the same award for Becoming.

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 the Obamas founded in 2018?

It launched with a multi-year Netflix deal in May 2018.

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

The film follows a Chinese glass company reopening a shuttered GM plant in Ohio.

What was his Secret Service code name?

Family code names share a first letter: Michelle was Renaissance, Malia Radiance and Sasha Rosebud.

Which hand does he write with?

He is one of a run of recent left-handed presidents that includes Ford, Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Clinton.

He played on his high school varsity team in which sport?

He kept up pickup games in the White House and turned the tennis court into a full court.

How many times was he named Time magazine's Person of the Year?

Both came in his election years, matching Bill Clinton's two selections in 1992 and 1998.

His presidential center on Chicago's South Side opened in June of which year?

It sits in Jackson Park, near the University of Chicago campus where he once taught.

Michelle Obama earned her undergraduate degree from which university?

She majored in sociology there before Harvard Law, following her brother Craig, a future college basketball coach, to Princeton.

What was the name of Michelle Obama's initiative against childhood obesity, launched in January 2010?

It came with a vegetable garden on the South Lawn, the first at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt's victory garden.

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

It sold more than 10 million copies within months, and its audiobook won her a Grammy.

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 Democratic state senator did Obama succeed in Illinois's 13th District in 1996?

The district then ran from Hyde Park-Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn.

Which Major League Baseball team does Obama support, throwing out a first pitch at the 2005 ALCS?

He wore a White Sox jacket to throw the ceremonial first pitch at the 2009 All-Star Game too.

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

Sonia Sotomayor had filled David Souter's seat a year earlier.

At the University of Hawaii, Obama's mother met her second husband Lolo Soetoro, a graduate student in what?

Ann Dunham herself later earned a PhD in anthropology in 1992, having divorced Soetoro in 1980.

Obama's grandmother Madelyn Dunham died on November 2, 2008 - how long before his election as president?

The Kansas-born grandmother had helped raise him in Honolulu from 1971.

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

Bill Clinton delivered the formal nominating speech there.

How many half-siblings does Obama have from his Kenyan father's family?

He was raised with just one, his half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, and first met his paternal relatives on a 1988 trip to Kenya.