Questions about Al Gore
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Why did Al Gore lose the 2000 presidential election despite winning the popular vote?
Gore won the national popular vote by 543,895 votes but lost the Electoral College because the state of Florida, with its 25 electoral votes, was ultimately certified for George W. Bush by a margin of 537 votes. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Bush v. Gore on the 12th of December 2000, that no constitutionally valid recount could be completed by the December 12 deadline, ending recounts underway in selected Florida counties. One District of Columbia elector abstained, giving Gore 266 electoral votes to Bush's 271.
What did Al Gore do in Vietnam and why did he enlist?
Gore served as a journalist with the 20th Engineer Brigade in Bien Hoa, Vietnam, writing for a publication called The Castle Courier. He enlisted in August 1969 primarily because he believed that finding a way out of service would hand a political weapon to his father's Republican opponent in the 1970 Senate race, and because he did not want someone with fewer options to go in his place. He received an honorable discharge in May 1971.
Did Al Gore claim he invented the Internet?
In a March 1999 interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Gore said "I took the initiative in creating the Internet," referring to his legislative work promoting high-speed computing networks. Critics shortened this to the claim he said he invented the Internet. Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn stated that Gore's congressional initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the Internet's development, and Cerf later said Gore's work "led directly to the commercialization of the Internet."
What Nobel Prize did Al Gore win and why?
Al Gore was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, shared with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The award recognized his work in climate change activism, which included the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth and decades of environmental advocacy dating back to congressional hearings on climate change he held as a freshman congressman in 1976.
What was the High Performance Computing Act of 1991 that Al Gore sponsored?
The High Performance Computing Act of 1991, commonly called the Gore Bill, was passed on the 9th of December 1991. It drew on a 1988 report submitted to Congress by a group chaired by UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock, one of the central creators of the ARPANET. The act led to the National Information Infrastructure, which Gore termed the "information superhighway," and is credited with helping lay the groundwork for the commercialization of the Internet.
How did Al Gore's son's accident in 1989 affect his political career?
On the 3rd of April 1989, Gore's six-year-old son Albert was struck by a car outside a baseball game, thrown 30 feet, and critically injured. Gore described the event as a "moment of personal rebirth" that changed everything. In August 1991, he cited his son's accident as a factor in his decision not to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992, saying he did not feel right tearing himself away from his family.