1.
Connecticut
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Connecticut is the southernmost state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. Connecticut is also often grouped along with New York and New Jersey as the Tri-State Area and it is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capital city is Hartford, and its most populous city is Bridgeport, the state is named for the Connecticut River, a major U. S. river that approximately bisects the state. The word Connecticut is derived from various anglicized spellings of an Algonquian word for long tidal river, Connecticut is the third smallest state by area, the 29th most populous, and the fourth most densely populated of the 50 United States. It is known as the Constitution State, the Nutmeg State, the Provisions State, and it was influential in the development of the federal government of the United States. Connecticuts center of population is in Cheshire, New Haven County, Connecticuts first European settlers were Dutch. They established a small, short-lived settlement in present-day Hartford at the confluence of the Park, initially, half of Connecticut was a part of the Dutch colony New Netherland, which included much of the land between the Connecticut and Delaware rivers. The first major settlements were established in the 1630s by England, the Connecticut and New Haven Colonies established documents of Fundamental Orders, considered the first constitutions in North America. In 1662, the three colonies were merged under a charter, making Connecticut a crown colony. This colony was one of the Thirteen Colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution, the Connecticut River, Thames River, and ports along the Long Island Sound have given Connecticut a strong maritime tradition which continues today. The state also has a history of hosting the financial services industry, including insurance companies in Hartford. As of the 2010 Census, Connecticut features the highest per-capita income, Human Development Index, and median household income in the United States. Landmarks and Cities of Connecticut Connecticut is bordered on the south by Long Island Sound, on the west by New York, on the north by Massachusetts, and on the east by Rhode Island. The state capital and third largest city is Hartford, and other cities and towns include Bridgeport, New Haven, Stamford, Waterbury, Norwalk, Danbury, New Britain, Greenwich. Connecticut is slightly larger than the country of Montenegro, there are 169 incorporated towns in Connecticut. The highest peak in Connecticut is Bear Mountain in Salisbury in the northwest corner of the state, the highest point is just east of where Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York meet, on the southern slope of Mount Frissell, whose peak lies nearby in Massachusetts. At the opposite extreme, many of the towns have areas that are less than 20 feet above sea level. Connecticut has a maritime history and a reputation based on that history—yet the state has no direct oceanfront
2.
Donald Trump
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Donald John Trump is the 45th and current President of the United States. Prior to entering politics he was a businessman and television personality, Trump was born and raised in Queens, New York City, and earned an economics degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He then took charge of The Trump Organization, the estate and construction firm founded by his paternal grandmother, which he ran for four. During his real career, Trump has built, renovated, and managed numerous office towers, hotels, casinos. Besides real estate, he started several ventures and has lent the use of his name for the branding of various products. He owned the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants from 1996 to 2015, and he hosted The Apprentice, as of 2017, Forbes listed him as the 544th wealthiest person in the world with a net worth of $3.5 billion. Trump first publicly expressed interest in running for office in 1987. He won two Reform Party presidential primaries in 2000, but withdrew his candidacy early on, in June 2015, he launched his campaign for the 2016 presidential election and quickly emerged as the front-runner among 17 candidates in the Republican primaries. His final opponents suspended their campaigns in May 2016, and in July he was nominated at the Republican National Convention along with Indiana governor Mike Pence as his running mate. His campaign received unprecedented media coverage and international attention, many of the statements he made at rallies, in interviews, or on social media were controversial or false. Trump won the election on November 8,2016, in a surprise victory against Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. His political positions have been described by scholars and commentators as populist, protectionist, Trump was born on June 14,1946 at the Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, Queens, New York City. He was the fourth of five born to Frederick Christ Fred Trump. His siblings are Maryanne, Fred Jr. Elizabeth, and Robert, Trumps ancestors originated from the village of Kallstadt, Palatinate, Germany on his fathers side, and from the Outer Hebrides isles of Scotland on his mothers side. All his grandparents, and his mother, were born in Europe and his mothers grandfather was also christened Donald. On a visit to his village, he met Elisabeth Christ. He died from the flu pandemic of 1918 and Elizabeth incorporated the family real estate business, Elizabeth Trump and Son, which would later become The Trump Organization. Trumps father Fred was born in the Bronx, and worked with his mother since he was 15 as a real estate developer, primarily in the New York boroughs of Queens and he eventually built and sold thousands of houses, barracks and apartments
3.
Hillary Clinton
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Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is an American politician who was the 67th United States Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, U. S. Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001, and the Democratic Partys nominee for President of the United States in the 2016 election. Born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge, Clinton graduated from Wellesley College in 1969, after serving as a congressional legal counsel, she moved to Arkansas and married Bill Clinton in 1975. In 1977, she co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families and she was appointed the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978 and became the first female partner at Rose Law Firm the following year. As First Lady of Arkansas, she led a force whose recommendations helped reform Arkansass public schools. As First Lady of the United States, Clinton fought for gender equality, because her marriage survived the Lewinsky scandal, her role as first lady drew a polarized response from the public. Clinton was elected in 2000 as the first female senator from New York and she was re-elected to the Senate in 2006. Running for president in 2008, she won far more delegates than any previous female candidate, as Secretary of State in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2013, Clinton responded to the Arab Spring, during which she advocated the U. S. military intervention in Libya. Leaving office after Obamas first term, she wrote her book and undertook speaking engagements. Clinton made a presidential run in 2016. She became the first female candidate to be nominated for president by a major U. S. political party, despite winning a plurality of the national popular vote, Clinton lost the Electoral College and the presidency to her Republican rival Donald Trump. Hillary Diane Rodham was born on October 26,1947, at Edgewater Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. In 1995, Clinton claimed that her mother had named her after Sir Edmund Hillary, co-first mountaineer to scale Mount Everest, however, the Everest climb did not take place until 1953, more than five years after Clinton was born. Clinton was raised in a United Methodist family, living first in Chicago and her father, Hugh Ellsworth Rodham, was of English and Welsh descent, and managed a small but successful textile business. Her mother, Dorothy Emma Howell, was a homemaker of Dutch, English, French Canadian, Scottish, Clinton has two younger brothers, Hugh and Tony. As a child, Rodham was a student of her teachers at the public schools that she attended in Park Ridge. She participated in such as swimming and baseball, and earned numerous badges as a Brownie. She attended Maine East High School, where she participated in the student council, the school newspaper, and was selected for the National Honor Society
4.
Barack Obama
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Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He is the first African American to have served as president and he previously served in the U. S. Senate representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008, and in the Illinois State Senate from 1997 to 2004. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, two years after the territory was admitted to the Union as the 50th state and he grew up mostly in Hawaii, but also spent one year of his childhood in Washington State and four years in Indonesia. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, he worked as a community organizer in Chicago, in 1988 Obama enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation, he became a civil rights attorney and professor, Obama represented the 13th District for three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, when he ran for the U. S. Senate. In 2008, Obama was nominated for president, a year after his campaign began and he was elected over Republican John McCain, and was inaugurated on January 20,2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, during his first two years in office, Obama signed more landmark legislation than any Democratic president since LBJs Great Society. Main reforms were the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, after a lengthy debate over the national debt limit, Obama signed the Budget Control and the American Taxpayer Relief Acts. In foreign policy, Obama increased U. S. troop levels in Afghanistan, reduced nuclear weapons with the U. S. -Russian New START treaty, and ended military involvement in the Iraq War. He ordered military involvement in Libya in opposition to Muammar Gaddafi, after winning re-election over Mitt Romney, Obama was sworn in for a second term in 2013. Obama also advocated gun control in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and issued wide-ranging executive actions concerning climate change and immigration. In foreign policy, Obama ordered military intervention in Iraq in response to gains made by ISIL after the 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, Obama left office in January 2017 with a 60% approval rating. He currently resides in Washington, D. C and his presidential library will be built in Chicago. Obama was born on August 4,1961, at Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu and he is the only President to have been born in Hawaii. He was born to a mother and a black father. His mother, Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas, of mostly English descent, with some German, Irish, Scottish, Swiss and his father, Barack Obama Sr. was a married Luo Kenyan man from Nyangoma Kogelo. Obamas parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the couple married in Wailuku, Hawaii on February 2,1961, six months before Obama was born. In late August 1961, Obamas mother moved him to the University of Washington in Seattle for a year
5.
Mitt Romney
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Raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, by his parents George and Lenore Romney, he spent 2½ years in France as a Mormon missionary, starting in 1966. He married Ann Davies in 1969, and they have five sons, by 1971, he had participated in the political campaigns of both parents. He earned a BA at Brigham Young University in 1971 and a joint JD–MBA at Harvard University in 1975, Romney entered the management consulting industry, and in 1977 secured a position at Bain & Company. Later serving as Bains chief executive officer, he helped lead the company out of a financial crisis, in 1984, he co-founded and led the spin-off company Bain Capital, a highly profitable private equity investment firm that became one of the largest of its kind in the nation. Active in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he served during his business career as the bishop of his ward and then stake president in his home area near Boston. After stepping down from Bain Capital and his leadership role in the LDS Church. Upon losing to longtime incumbent Ted Kennedy, he resumed his position at Bain Capital, years later, a successful stint as President and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics led to a relaunch of his political career. He also presided over the elimination of a projected $1. 2–1.5 billion deficit through a combination of spending cuts, increased fees, and the closure of corporate tax loopholes. He did not seek re-election in 2006, instead focusing on his campaign for the Republican nomination in the 2008 U. S. presidential election and he won several primaries and caucuses, however, he lost to the eventual nominee, Senator John McCain. His considerable net worth, estimated in 2012 at $190–250 million, following his term as Governor of Massachusetts in 2007, Romney was the Republican Partys nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 election. He won the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, becoming the first Mormon to be a major party presidential nominee and he was defeated by incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama in the November 2012 general election, losing by 332–206 electoral college votes. The popular vote margin was 51–47 percent in Obamas favor, following the election, he initially kept a low profile, and later became more visible politically. Willard Mitt Romney was born on March 12,1947, at Harper University Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, one of four born to automobile executive George W. Romney. His mother was a native of Logan, Utah, and his father was born to American parents in a Mormon colony in Chihuahua, of primarily English descent, he also has Scottish and German ancestry. Another great-great-grandfather, Parley P. Pratt, helped lead the early Church, Romney has three elder siblings, Margo, Jane, and Scott. His parents named him after a friend, businessman J. Willard Marriott, and his fathers cousin, Milton Mitt Romney. Romney was referred to as Billy until kindergarten, when he indicated a preference for Mitt, in 1953, the family moved from Detroit to the affluent suburb of Bloomfield Hills. His father became the chairman and CEO of American Motors the following year, soon helping the company avoid bankruptcy, by 1959, his father had become a nationally known figure in print and on television, and the youngster idolized him
6.
John McCain
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John Sidney McCain III is an American politician who currently serves as the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for the 2008 U. S. presidential election, McCain followed his father and grandfather, both four-star admirals, into the United States Navy, graduating from the U. S. Naval Academy in 1958. He became an aviator, flying ground-attack aircraft from aircraft carriers. During the Vietnam War, he was almost killed in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire, in October 1967, while on a bombing mission over Hanoi, he was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was a prisoner of war until 1973, McCain experienced episodes of torture, and refused an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer. His war wounds have left him with physical limitations. He retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981 and moved to Arizona, elected to the U. S. House of Representatives in 1982, McCain served two terms. He was first elected to the U. S. Senate in 1986, winning re-election easily five times, while generally adhering to conservative principles, McCain at times has had a media reputation as a maverick for his willingness to disagree with his party on certain issues. He is also known for his work in the 1990s to restore relations with Vietnam. McCain ran for the Republican nomination in 2000 but lost a primary season contest to George W. Bush of Texas. He subsequently adopted more orthodox conservative stances and attitudes and largely opposed actions of the Obama administration, by 2013, however, he had become a key figure in the Senate for negotiating deals on certain issues in an otherwise partisan environment. In 2015, McCain became chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John McCain was born on August 29,1936, at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone, to naval officer John S. McCain Jr. and Roberta McCain. He has a brother named Joe and an elder sister named Sandy. At that time, the Panama Canal was under U. S. control, McCains family tree includes Scots-Irish and English ancestors. Both his father and his grandfather, John S. McCain Sr. became four-star United States Navy admirals. The McCain family followed his father to various postings in the United States. Altogether, he attended about 20 schools, in 1951, the family settled in Northern Virginia, and McCain attended Episcopal High School, a private preparatory boarding school in Alexandria. He excelled at wrestling and graduated in 1954, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, McCain entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis
7.
George W. Bush
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George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He was also the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000 and he is the eldest son of Barbara and George H. W. Bush. After graduating from Yale University in 1968 and Harvard Business School in 1975, Bush married Laura Welch in 1977 and ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives shortly thereafter. He later co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before defeating Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election and he is the second president to assume the nations highest office after his father, following the lead of John Quincy Adams. He is also a brother of Jeb Bush, a former Governor of Florida who was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2016 presidential election, the September 11 terrorist attacks occurred eight months into Bushs first term as president. Bush responded with what became known as the Bush Doctrine, launching a War on Terror, a military campaign that included the war in Afghanistan in 2001. He also promoted policies on the economy, health care, education, Social Security reform and his tenure included national debates on immigration, Social Security, electronic surveillance, and torture. In the 2004 Presidential race, Bush defeated Democratic Senator John Kerry in another close election. After his re-election, Bush received increasingly heated criticism from across the spectrum for his handling of the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina. Amid this criticism, the Democratic Party regained control of Congress in the 2006 elections, Bush left office in 2009, returning to Texas where he purchased a home in Crawford. He wrote a memoir, Decision Points and his presidential library was opened in 2013. His presidency has been ranked among the worst in historians polls published in the late 2000s and 2010s. George Walker Bush was born on July 6,1946, at Grace-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, as the first child of George Herbert Walker Bush and his wife, the former Barbara Pierce. He was raised in Midland and Houston, Texas, with four siblings, Jeb, Neil, Marvin, another younger sister, Robin, died from leukemia at the age of three in 1953. His grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a U. S and his father, George H. W. Bush, was Ronald Reagans Vice President from 1981 to 1989 and the 41st U. S. President from 1989 to 1993. Bush has English and some German ancestry, along with more distant Dutch, Welsh, Irish, French, Bush attended public schools in Midland, Texas, until the family moved to Houston after he had completed seventh grade. He then spent two years at The Kinkaid School, a school in Houston. Bush attended high school at Phillips Academy, a school in Andover, Massachusetts
8.
John Kerry
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John Forbes Kerry is an American politician who served as the 68th United States Secretary of State from 2013 to 2017. A Democrat, he previously served Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1985 to 2013 and he was the Democratic nominee in the 2004 presidential election, losing narrowly to Republican incumbent George W. Bush. Kerry was born in Aurora, Colorado and attended boarding school in Massachusetts and he graduated from Yale University in 1966 with a major in political science. Kerry enlisted in the Naval Reserve in 1966, and between 1968 and 1969, he served an abbreviated four-month tour of duty in South Vietnam as officer-in-charge of a Swift Boat. For that service, he was awarded combat medals that include the Silver Star Medal, Bronze Star Medal and he appeared in the Fulbright Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs where he deemed United States war policy in Vietnam to be the cause of war crimes. After receiving a J. D. from Boston College Law School and he served as Lieutenant Governor under Michael Dukakis from 1983 to 1985 and was elected to the U. S. Senate in 1984 and was sworn in the following January. On the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he led a series of hearings from 1987 to 1989 which were a precursor to the Iran–Contra affair, Kerry was re-elected to additional terms in 1990,1996,2002, and 2008. In his 2004 presidential campaign, Kerry criticized George W. Bush for the Iraq War and he and his running mate, North Carolina Senator John Edwards, lost the election, finishing 35 electoral votes behind Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Kerry returned to the Senate, becoming Chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship in 2007 and then of the Foreign Relations Committee in 2009. In January 2013, Kerry was nominated by President Barack Obama to succeed outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then confirmed by the U. S. Senate, John Forbes Kerry was born on December 11,1943, in Aurora, Colorado, at Fitzsimons Army Hospital. He is the second of four born to Richard John Kerry, a Foreign Service officer and lawyer, and Rosemary Isabel Forbes. His father was raised Catholic and his mother was Episcopalian and he was raised with an elder sister named Margaret, a younger sister named Diana and a younger brother named Cameron. The children were raised in their fathers faith, John Kerry served as an altar boy, Kerry grew up a military brat until his father was discharged from the Army Air Corps, causing the family to settle in Washington, D. C. in 1949. While in Washington, Richard took a spot in the Department of the Navys Office of General Counsel and his extended maternal family enjoyed great wealth as members of the Forbes and Dudley–Winthrop families. Kerrys parents themselves were upper-middle class, and a great aunt paid for him to attend elite boarding schools. In 1957, his father was stationed at the U. S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, and Kerry was sent back to the United States to attend boarding school. He first attended the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, and later St. Pauls, Concord, New Hampshire, Kerry founded the John Winant Society at St. Pauls to debate the issues of the day, the Society still exists there. In 1962, Kerry entered Yale University, majoring in political science and he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966
9.
Al Gore
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Albert Arnold Al Gore Jr. is an American politician and environmentalist who served as the 45th Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He was Clintons running mate in their campaign in 1992. At the end of Clintons second term, Gore was picked as the Democratic nominee for the 2000 presidential election, after leaving office, Gore remained prominent as an author and environmental activist, whose work in climate change activism earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Gore was an official for 24 years. He was a Congressman from Tennessee and from 1985 to 1993 served as one of the states Senators and he served as Vice President during the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001. In the 2000 presidential election, in what was one of the closest presidential races in history, Gore won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College to Republican George W. Bush. A controversial election dispute over a vote recount in Florida was settled by the U. S. Supreme Court, and a senior adviser to Google. Gore is also a partner in the capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He has served as a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Fisk University. He served on the Board of Directors of World Resources Institute, Gore was also the subject of the Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth in 2006. In 2007, he was named a runner-up for Times 2007 Person of the Year, Gore was born in Washington, D. C. the second of two children of Albert Gore Sr. a U. S. Representative who later served for 18 years as U. S, Senator from Tennessee, and Pauline Gore, one of the first women to graduate from Vanderbilt University Law School. Gore is partly descended from Scots-Irish immigrants who first settled in Virginia in the mid-17th-century and his older sister Nancy LaFon Gore, who was born in 1938, died of lung cancer in 1984. During the school year he lived with his family in The Fairfax Hotel in the Embassy Row section in Washington D. C, during the summer months, he worked on the family farm in Carthage, Tennessee, where the Gores grew tobacco and hay and raised cattle. Gore attended St. Albans School, an independent college preparatory day and boarding school for boys in Washington, D. C. from 1956 to 1965, a prestigious feeder school for the Ivy League. He was the captain of the team, threw discus for the track and field team, and participated in basketball, art. He graduated 25th in his class of 51, applied to one college, Harvard. Gore met Mary Elizabeth Tipper Aitcheson from the nearby St. Agnes School at his St. Albans senior prom in 1965
10.
Bill Clinton
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William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Prior to the Presidency he was the 40th Governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, before that, he served as Arkansas Attorney General from 1977 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, Clinton was ideogically a New Democrat, Clinton is married to Hillary Clinton, who served as United States Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013 and U. S. Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, and served the Democratic nominee for President in 2016, Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham both earned degrees from Yale Law School, where they met and began dating. As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton overhauled the states education system, Clinton was elected President of the United States in 1992, defeating incumbent George H. W. Bush. At age 46, he was the third-youngest president and the first from the Baby Boomer generation, Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history and signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement. After failing to pass health care reform, the Democratic House was ousted when the Republican Party won control of the Congress in 1994. Two years later, in 1996, Clinton became the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be elected to a second term, Clinton passed welfare reform and the State Childrens Health Insurance Program, providing health coverage for millions of children. Clinton was acquitted by the U. S. Senate in 1999, the Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus between the years 1998 and 2000, the last three years of Clintons presidency. In foreign policy, Clinton ordered U. S. Clinton left office with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any U. S. President since World War II, since then, Clinton has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work. He created the William J. Clinton Foundation to address international causes, such as the prevention of AIDS, in 2004, Clinton published his autobiography, My Life. In 2009, Clinton was named the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti, since leaving office, Clinton has been rated highly in public opinion polls of U. S. Presidents. Clinton was born on August 19,1946, at Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, Arkansas and he was the son of William Jefferson Blythe Jr. a traveling salesman who had died in an automobile accident three months before his birth, and Virginia Dell Cassidy. His parents had married on September 4,1943, but this later proved to be bigamous. Soon after their son was born, his mother traveled to New Orleans to study nursing, leaving her son in Hope with her parents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, who owned and ran a small grocery store. At a time when the Southern United States was segregated racially, in 1950, Bills mother returned from nursing school and married Roger Clinton Sr. who owned an automobile dealership in Hot Springs, Arkansas, with his brother and Earl T. Ricks. The family moved to Hot Springs in 1950, although he immediately assumed use of his stepfathers surname, it was not until Clinton turned fifteen that he formally adopted the surname Clinton as a gesture toward his stepfather. In Hot Springs, Clinton attended St. Johns Catholic Elementary School, Ramble Elementary School, and Hot Springs High School—where he was a student leader, avid reader
11.
Bob Dole
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In the 1976 presidential election, Dole was the Republican Party nominee for Vice President and incumbent President Gerald Fords running mate. He ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980 and 1988, in 1996, Dole secured the Republican nomination for President of the United States, but lost the general election to incumbent President Bill Clinton. Dole is currently a member of the council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and special counsel at the Washington. Dole is married to former U. S. cabinet member and former U. S, Senator Elizabeth Hanford Dole of North Carolina. Dole was born on July 22,1923, in Russell, Kansas, Doles father, who had moved the family to Russell shortly before Robert was born, earned money by running a small creamery. One of Doles fathers customers was the father of future Senator Arlen Specter, during the Great Depression, which severely impacted Kansas and its residents, the Dole family moved to the basement of their home and eventually rented out the upper floors to raise money. As a boy, Dole worked as a jerk in the local drug store. Dole graduated from Russell High School in the spring of 1941, Dole had been a star high school athlete in Russell, and Kansas basketball coach Phog Allen traveled to Russell to recruit him to play for the Jayhawks basketball team. While at KU, Dole played for the team, the track team. In football, Dole played at the end position, earning varsity letters in 1942 and 1944, while in college, Dole joined the Kappa Sigma Fraternity, and in 1970 was bestowed with the Fraternitys Man of the Year honor. Doles pre-med studies at KU were interrupted by World War II, after the war, Dole returned to become a law student. Dole attended the University of Arizona from 1948 to 1951 and earned both his law degree and BA degrees from Washburn University in 1952, Dole was initiated as a Freemason of Russell Lodge No. 177, Russell, Kansas on April 19,1955, Dole grew up in a house at 1035 North Maple in Russell and it remained his official residence throughout his political career. In 1942, Dole joined the United States Armys Enlisted Reserve Corps to fight in World War II, Dole was transported to the United States, where his recovery was slow, interrupted by blood clots and a life-threatening infection. After large doses of penicillin had not succeeded, Dole overcame the infection with the administration of streptomycin and he nevertheless remained despondent, not ready to accept the fact that my life would be changed forever. He was encouraged to see Hampar Kelikian, an orthopedist in Chicago who had working with veterans returning from war. Dr. K, as Dole later came to call him, operated on him seven times, free of charge, and had, in Doles words. Dole recovered from his wounds at the Percy Jones Army Hospital, Dole was decorated three times, receiving two Purple Hearts for his injuries, and the Bronze Star with combat V for valor for his attempt to assist a downed radioman
