President Barack Obama - things you may not have known about him!

shared by Brother Sundjata Abubakari of www.blacksciencefictionso ciety.com
President Barack Obama - things you may not have known about him!
Shared by Sister Yasmin/ yasmin@apooobooks.com


* He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics
* He was known as “O’Bomber” at high school for his skill at basketball
* His name means “one who is blessed” in Swahili
* His favorite meal is wife Michelle’s shrimp linguini
* He won a Grammy in 2006 for the audio version of his memoir, Dreams From My Father
* He is left-handed - the sixth post-war president to be left-handed
* He has read every Harry Potter book
* He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali
* He worked in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop as a teenager and now can’t stand ice cream
* His favorite snacks are chocolate-peanut protein bars
* He ate dog meat, snake meat, and roasted grasshopper while living in Indonesia
* He can speak Spanish
* While on the campaign trail he refused to watch CNN and had sports channels on instead
* His favorite drink is black forest berry iced tea
* He promised Michelle he would quit smoking before running for president - he didn’t
* He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia
* He can bench press an impressive 200lbs
* He was known as Barry until attending college when he asked to be addressed by his full name
* His favorite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
* He visited Wokingham, Berks, in 1996 for the stag party of his half-sister’ s fiancé, but left when a stripper arrived
* His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy
* He and Michelle made $4.2 million in 2007, with much coming from sales of his books
* His favorite films are Casablanca and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
* He carries a tiny Madonna and child statue and a bracelet belonging to a soldier in Iraq for good luck
* He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee.
* His favorite music includes Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Bach and The Fugees
* He took Michelle to see the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing on their first date
* He enjoys playing Scrabble and poker
* He doesn’t drink coffee and rarely drinks alcohol
* He would have liked to have been an architect if he were not a politician
* As a teenager he took drugs including marijuana and cocaine
* His daughters’ ambitions are to go to Yale before becoming an actress (Malia, 10) and to sing and dance (Sasha, 7)
* He hates the youth trend for trousers which sag beneath the backside
* He repaid his student loan only four years ago after signing his book deal
* His house in Chicago has four fire places
* Daughter Malia’s godmother is Jesse Jackson’s daughter Santita
* He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry
* He uses an Apple Mac laptop
* He drives a Ford Escape Hybrid, having ditched his gas-guzzling Chrysler 300
* He wears $1,500 Hart Schaffner Marx suits
* He owns four identical pairs of black size 11 shoes
* He has his hair cut once a week by his Chicago barber, Zariff, who charges $21 (not sure this is still true now that he lives in DC)
* His favorite fictional television programs are Mash and The Wire
* He was given the code name “Renegade” by his Secret Service handlers
* He was nicknamed “Bear” by his late grandmother
* He plans to install a basketball court in the White House grounds
* His favorite artist is Pablo Picasso
* His specialty as a cook is chili
* He has said many of his friends in Indonesia were “street urchins”
* He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life
* His late father was a senior economist for the Kenyan government