Poorly educated, accused of plagiarism, lost two children. 7 facts about Biden

US President Joe Biden is spending his final weeks in office. The 82-year-old politician will leave his post on January 20, handing over powers to Donald Trump. The life and career of Biden was full of twists and turns, curiosities and tragic events unknown to the general public. What you need to know about the outgoing head of the White House - in the material "Izvestia".

Fact 1. was a negligent student

- In his youth, Joseph Robinette Biden - Jr. was not distinguished by a great desire to study. In high school, he spent a lot of time playing American soccer, and his academic performance was rated as "above average". He was a leader among his classmates and was elected head boy. Biden went on to play soccer at the University of Delaware, which further hindered his studies. He finished his first semester with a 1.9 out of 4 grade point average, so his parents forbade him from playing sports.

- Biden did not do any better and graduated in 506th place out of 688 students of his stream. He subsequently enrolled at Syracuse University College of Law, where he again did not perform outstandingly well. He did graduate, becoming a Doctor of Laws, but was 76th among 85 graduates.

Fact 2: He got rid of his stuttering

- Biden suffered from a severe stutter from an early age, causing him to endure taunts from his peers and fights with them as a child. Partly because of this, he devoted a lot of time to sports, trying to gain recognition. He was once even ridiculed by a nun-teacher at a Catholic school, for which his mother threatened to "rip the bonnet off her head."

- Biden's family had an uncle who also stuttered and justified his failures, which made the future politician especially keen to overcome his ailment. He practiced speech training by long reading poems in front of a mirror and by the age of 20 got rid of stuttering. Biden learned to talk for a long time, for which he was later nicknamed the most talkative politician in the United States. The reservations he began to make more often in old age are thought to be the result of childhood speech problems.

Fact 3: Survived the deaths of his wife and daughter early in his political career

- In 1972, Biden was first elected to the U.S. Senate, becoming at age 30 one of the youngest senators in history. However, tragedy soon struck his family. As his wife Neilia was Christmas shopping with sons Beau and Hunter and one-year-old daughter Naomi, she crashed into a truck at an intersection. Neulia and Naomi died on the spot, while her sons were seriously injured.

- Because of the incident, Biden thought about suicide and refusal to fulfill the duties of a senator, but still continued his political career. He took his senatorial oath at the hospital where Bo and Hunter were treated. In order not to burden the children to move to the capital, Biden remained living with them in the state of Delaware and got to work in Washington by train, spending an hour and a half on the road. On December 18, when his wife and daughter died, Biden always takes a day off and dedicates that day to their memory.

Fact 4: Criticized school desegregation measures

- As a senator, Biden positioned himself as a liberal and civil rights advocate, but there was one episode in his career that spoils that reputation. In the 1970s, it was common practice in the United States to bus students in such a way that schools maintained a mixed racial composition. In this way, authorities wanted to desegregate schools so that they were not predominantly white or black.

Cartoon Democracy: Biden pardons Hunter's son in defiance of the law

The outgoing US president's decision was not supported even by fellow party members

- At first, Biden supported the practice, but his white constituents in Delaware opposed sending their children to neighborhood schools. Biden then supported a ban on student transportation and made it a major focus of his work in the Senate. He demanded the elimination of mandatory busing at the federal level and called the measure useless in actually desegregating schools. In this, his position aligned with conservative Republicans, for which Biden had to fend off criticism.

- In the future, this episode from Biden's career was attempted to be used against him by Kamala Harris when they were both vying to run for president in 2020. Harris said that as a child, she was driven to school in a different neighborhood and it helped her get a better education, while Biden tried to stop the practice. However, this public rebuke did not stop Biden from picking Harris as his vice president.

Fact 5: Lost his first presidential election because of plagiarism

- Biden first ran for president of the United States in 1987, intending to become the second youngest head of state after John F. Kennedy. He confidently launched his campaign in the primaries, collecting more donations than other Democratic candidates. Almost immediately, however, Biden lost support because of plagiarism in his speeches.

- First, Biden was accused of copying turns from a speech by British Labor leader Neil Kinnock. Moreover, Biden was also rebuked for even borrowing his family history, passing it off as his own. Later journalists found several more examples of Biden copying speeches of other politicians, including Kennedy. He himself justified himself by saying that his own aides had let him down.

- The story brought Biden into the spotlight, and it was soon revealed that he called himself one of the top students in law school, which was a clear exaggeration. Under fire of criticism, Biden withdrew his candidacy and put his presidential ambitions behind him for 20 years.

Fact 6: Survived brain surgery

- Biden admitted that he was even glad for the early end of his first presidential campaign, as he survived two brain surgeries in the midst of it in 1988. In February, he developed severe neck pain and was diagnosed with an intracranial aneurysm. Because of a snowstorm, the politician had to be transported to the hospital by fire truck. He underwent emergency surgery within nine hours, an intervention that had a high risk for long-term effects on brain functionality. During his recovery, Biden also suffered a thromboembolism with serious complications.

- Three months later, Biden underwent brain surgery again, this time due to an aneurysm in another vessel. He was unable to perform his duties for seven months. Biden later recounted that doctors gave him less than a 50 percent chance of making a full recovery. He also joked that with these surgeries he had confirmed that he had a brain.

- Ironically, some time later, Biden's family was still struck by a tragedy that he himself had avoided thanks to the surgeries. In 2015, the politician's eldest son Beau Biden died due to a brain tumor. He intended to follow in his father's footsteps and start a political career by running for governor of Delaware.

Fact 7: Proposed to divide Iraq into three parts

- In the last years of his senatorship, Biden was actively engaged in the international agenda. His area of interest included the war in Iraq, which began in 2002. Biden supported the introduction of U.S. troops and the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein. As chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, he collected evidence that justified the invasion.

- Biden later called his actions a mistake, but did not push for a withdrawal from Iraq. In 2006, he proposed a plan to settle the country, which envisioned its transformation into a federation and division into three parts: Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite. Each of them was to become self-governing, and the federal center in Baghdad would deal only with defense, foreign policy and oil production. The U.S. Senate even approved such a scheme by voting in favor of a non-binding resolution, but it was condemned in Iraq because it essentially proposed dividing the country. Biden's idea ultimately failed to gain widespread support.