Barack Obama is the th president of the United States. The name Barack means one who is blessed in Swahili. His parents divorce when he is years old. He is the first African American to hold the position of US senator. He has been nominated for three Grammy Awards and won two. He was named Time Magazines Person of the Year in December. The White House releases his original birth certificate seeking to put an end to persistent rumors that he was not born in the U.S. His autobiography Dreams from My Father A Story of Race and Inheritance is published in which he admits to experimenting with marijuana and cocaine as a teenager. His mother Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro anthropologist dies of ovarian cancer at the age of . November Obamas father Barack Obama Sr. dies in a car accident in Kenya. The first US president to address the UK Parliament in May May. Announces the withdrawal of US troops in Iraq by December which would fulfill a campaign pledge to end the war by December. Attends a ceremony to honor victims of September th at Ground Zero in Pakistan. He also visits the Pride of Midtown firehouse that lost the most men of any firehouse in the history of the city. He visits five African countries and visits NyangomaKogelo his fathers hometown in Kenya in September. In November he is elected president with an estimated . million popular votes and electoral votes. In December he is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the war in Iraq. In January he issues executive orders regarding the closing of Guantnamo Bay torture and creating a review of detention facilities and of individual cases. In June he says the legal decision should be up to the states to do so he says he should be the sitting US president. In July he delivers the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. In August he chooses Senator Joe Biden DDE as his running mate. In September he delivers an address from the Oval Office to mark the end of US combat operations in Iraq his first as president. September Hosts meetings between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Washington DC. In October he visits the Israeli and Palestinian capitals to meet with the leaders of both countries. In February he wins his second Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for the audio version of his book The Audacity of Hope Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. In March he signs the Affordable Care Act a health care reform bill into law. In April he signs a bill to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and end the torture of prisoners. In May he announces that he will not accept federal matching funds for his presidential campaign foregoing million dollars in federal money and a cap on how much he can spend. In. August he accepts the. nomination for president on the democratic ticket becoming the first. African American candidate in US history to lead a major party. He became the first president to be nominated for a Grammy award for his reading of Dreams From My Father. He won two Emmy Awards and winning one.
President Barack Obama has been in office since 2008. He is the first African-American
