RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) –
As we continue to celebrate America’s 250th birthday, we are revealing things you may not know about our presidents.
Phil Aldridge features a two-time Grammy Award winner for “Best Spoken Word Album”.
He was a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the first president to be born outside the continental United States.
Barack Hussein Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His parents separated, and he was raised by his mother, Ann, and his maternal grandparents. Obama attended Occidental College and transferred to Columbia University, graduating in 1983. He would study law at Harvard and graduated in 1991.
He would meet his future wife, Michelle Robinson, at Harvard, and they would marry in 1992. That same year, he would begin an 11-year tenure teaching law at the University of Chicago.
Starting in 1996, Obama served three terms in the Illinois State Senate and made an unsuccessful run in the House of Representatives, but in 2004, he delivered the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention and won a seat in the US Senate representing Illinois.
He formally announced his candidacy for president in 2007, choosing Joe Biden to be his running mate. Barack Obama would defeat Republican John McCain to become the 44th President of the United States.
Nine days into his first term, he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, giving legal protection in the fight for equal pay for women. He passed a stimulus bill to bail out the auto industry and Wall Street.
In March of 2010, he signed the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare”, requiring everyone to have health insurance. Less than two months later, Seal Team Six captured and killed the mastermind of the September 11th attacks, Osama Bin Laden.
He would win re-election in 2012, defeating Mitt Romney. In his second term, Obama had two major accomplishments. First, he announced the Iran Nuclear Deal that would prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and in 2015, the US Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.
The 64-year-old (August 4, 1961) opened his presidential center in Chicago in June of 2026.
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