By Shelbi Austin and U.S. News Staff
1. Barack Hussein Obama II was born on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu. His first name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili. While Obama’s father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., was from Kenya, his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was from Kansas.
2. From age 6 to 10, Obama lived in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather. In 1971, he moved back to Hawaii and lived with his maternal grandparents.
3. He hasn't liked ice cream since his first job: working at Baskin-Robbins as a teenager growing up in Hawaii.
4. After attending Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years, he transferred to Columbia University in New York where he graduated with a degree in political science. He also attended Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he graduated magna cum laude. He was the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review.
5. In 1992, he married the former Michelle Robinson, also a Harvard Law School graduate, whom he met at a Chicago law firm. They have two daughters, Malia and Sasha.
6. Before becoming an Illinois state senator, Obama worked as a civil rights attorney, community organizer, lecturer and professor.
7. As a state senator, he sponsored and led the passage of Illinois’ first racial-profiling law, which requires the police to videotape homicide interrogations.
8. A school in his father's hometown of Kogelo, Kenya, has been renamed the Senator Obama Kogelo Secondary School.
9. In 2008 and again in 2012, he was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year.”
10. In 2007, Obama formally announced his campaign to run for president. He was elected president in November 2008 and served as the 44th president of the United States for two terms.
Shelbi Austin is a Web Producer for the News division at U.S. News & World Report. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at saustin@usnews.com.
