Joe Biden biography: 13 things about 46th U.S. president

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Joseph “Joe” Robinette Biden Jr. is the United States‘ 47th vice president and 46th president. A member of the Democratic Party, he defeated 45th U.S. president Donald Trump in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Born at St. Mary’s Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA in 1942, Biden will be 78 years old during his inauguration as the 46th U.S. president in January 2021 along with Kamala Harris as the 49th U.S. vice president. This makes him the oldest president of the country.

When Biden was a young boy, he had a stutter, which he reduced by reciting poetry before a mirror. He once had a summer job at a local swimming pool where he was the only white lifeguard and he joined black lifeguards in picketing a segregated movie theater.

Biden graduated from the Archmere Academy in Claymont, Delaware in 1961 and from the University of Delaware in Newark, New Jersey, USA in 1965 with a double major in history and political science and a minor in English. He played football and baseball and was class president in his junior and senior years in the Archmere Academy and also played football when he was a freshman in the University of Delaware.

From January 3, 1973 to January 15, 2009, Biden served as a senator from Delaware, USA making him the longest serving senator of the state. He first ran for president in 1987 but withdrew from the nomination race.

In 2008, Biden ran again for president but dropped out and became the running mate for Barack Obama. They won and the latter became the 44th U.S. president.

In 1972, Biden was elected to the U.S. Senator from Delaware, making him the sixth youngest senator in the country. In the same year, he lost his first wife Neilia Hunter Biden and their baby daughter Naomi Christina “Amy” Biden in a car accident in Hockessin, Delaware, which was survived by their sons Beau Biden and Hunter Biden.

On June 17, 1977, Biden married Jill Tracy Jacobs Biden, an English teacher he met through a blind date, and their daughter Ashley Blazer Biden was born on June 8, 1981. Here are 13 least known facts about him:

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  1. He never smoked or drank alcohol.
  2. His favorite food is pasta and his favorite desert is ice-cream.
  3. He was nicknamed Amtrak Joe for using Amtrak trains during his daily commute and funding Amtrak’s causes.
  4. While attending Syracuse University College of Law, he was drafted for service in the Vietnam War. However, after his graduation, he failed the medical due to his asthma.
  5. He had to propose to Jill five times before she agreed to marry him.
  6. In 1967, he bought a puppy for Neilia and named it Senator.
  7. In 1968, ranked 76th in his class of 85 when he received his law degree from Syracuse University College of Law in Syracuse, New York. Before graduating, he initially received an F in an introductory class on legal methodology for writing a paper relying almost exclusively on a single Fordham Law Review article, which he had cited only once, but he passed with high marks when he repeated the course.
  8. On January 5, 1973, he was sworn in as U.S. senator of Delaware at Beau’s bedside in the hospital. In 2015, Beau died of brain cancer.
  9. His favorite movie is “Chariots of Fire,” a 1981 British historical drama film based on the true story of British athletes Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams, who competed in the 1924 Olympics.
  10. He underwent surgery for a brain aneurysm in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District of Columbia, USA in February 1988 and surgery for a second brain aneurysm in May 1988.
  11. In 2002, his father Joseph Robinette Biden Sr. died at the age of 86.
  12. In 2010, his mother Eugenia “Jean” Finnegan Biden died at the age of 92.
  13. On November 20, 2023, he turned 81.

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