Al Gore: Chronology

Some key dates in the life of former Vice President Al Gore:

March 31, 1948 -- Albert Arnold Gore Jr. is born in Washington, D.C.

1969 -- Gore receives a bachelor's degree in government from Harvard.

Aug. 7, 1969 -- Enlists in the Army, serves two years, including a tour of duty in Vietnam.

1971-1972 -- Attends Vanderbilt School of Religion.

1973-1976 -- Works as a journalist for The Tennessean in Nashville.

1974-1976 -- Attends Vanderbilt Law School.

1976 -- Elected to the U.S. House, serves three consecutive terms.

November 1984 -- Elected to the U.S. Senate.

June 29, 1987 -- Launches his first presidential campaign.

June 16, 1988 -- Withdraws from the presidential race.

November 1990 -- Re-elected to the Senate.

July 9, 1992 -- Bill Clinton chooses Gore to be his vice presidential running mate.

1992 -- His environmental book, Earth in the Balance is published during the vice presidential campaign.

Jan. 20, 1993 -- Sworn in as the 44th vice president of the United States.

June 1993 -- Becomes the first vice president in six years to vote to break a tie in the Senate, passing Clinton's economic package.

November 1993 -- Appears on CNN's Larry King Live to debate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Ross Perot, a former presidential candidate and prominent critic of the trade pact.

Fall 1995 to spring 1996 -- Makes fund-raising phone calls from the White House using a Clinton-Gore campaign credit card.

April 29, 1996: Attends a Buddhist temple fund raiser where $60,000 in illegal donations are raised.

November 1996 -- Re-elected to a second term with Clinton.

March 3, 1997 -- Repeats, at a White House news conference, that "no controlling legal authority" prohibited him from making fund-raising phone calls from the White House.

Aug. 8, 1998 -- Says in an FBI interview that because he drank a lot of iced tea and might have needed a restroom break, he could have been absent during key parts of a meeting on fund-raising attended by President Clinton and campaign aides.

Nov. 24, 1998 -- Attorney General Janet Reno concludes "the evidence fails to provide any reasonable basis for a conclusion that Gore may have lied" about his fund-raising solicitations from the White House.

July 4, 1999 -- First grandchild, Wyatt, is born.

Sept. 16, 1999 -- Officially enters the race for the 2000 Democratic presidential nomination.

Aug. 16, 2000 -- Gets the Democratic presidential nomination.

Nov. 7, 2000 -- Presidential election undecided due to voting problems in Florida.

Nov. 8, 2000 -- Telephones George W. Bush at about 3 a.m. to concede; retracts concession about an hour later because Bush's margin of victory in Florida is slim enough to trigger an automatic recount.

Nov. 26, 2000 -- Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris certifies election results, giving Bush a 537-vote victory over Gore.

Dec. 8, 2000 -- Florida Supreme Court orders manual recounts of ballots to begin and adds 383 votes to Gore's total.

Dec. 9, 2000 -- U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta denies Bush's emergency motion to stop the recount but ordered Florida officials not to change his previously certified 537-vote lead. The U.S. Supreme Court, divided 5-4, orders the manual recounts stopped.

Dec. 13, 2000 -- Concedes the presidency to Bush, ending a 36-day court battle for the nation's highest elected office.

Aug. 23, 2001 -- Second grandchild, Anna, is born.

Sept. 29, 2001 -- Declares that "George W. Bush is my commander in chief," in an Iowa speech planned as his first step back into the limelight after losing the election.

November 2001 -- Accepts job as vice chairman of Metropolitan West Financial, a Los Angeles-based financial services holding company.

November 2002 -- Launches publicity tour for book, Joined At The Heart: The Transformation of the American Family, written with wife Tipper, fueling speculation that he will challenge Bush for the white house in 2004.

Dec. 15, 2002 -- Announces he will not run for president in 2004.