8 things you didn’t know about ex-American President George Bush who passed on

The death of former US President George HW Bush, 94, has been announced by a family spokesman.

Bush Senior, the 41st president of the United States, who served from 1989 to 1993, died on Friday, about eight months after the death of his wife, Barbara Bush.

“Jeb, Neil, Marvin, Doro and I are saddened to announce that after 94 remarkable years, our dear Dad has died,” his son, former president George W Bush, said in a statement released on Twitter by a family spokesman.

“George H.W. Bush was a man of the highest character and the best dad a son or daughter could ask for.”

Listed below are eight things you may not have known about the former leader whose successful campaign to drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait remains his most significant accomplishment.

1. As a teenager, Bush contracted a serious staph infection and nearly died. Once he was well, he repeated a year of high school to make up for the lost time.

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2. As a senior at Phillips Academy he wanted to enlist in the military after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, even though he had been accepted at Yale. Despite his father’s disapproval, he signed up for the Navy’s flight training program on his 18th birthday.

3. When he received his Navy pilot’s wings, he was the Navy’s youngest pilot.

4. In early letters, he called future wife Barbara “Bobsie.” Recounting his decades of letter-writing in his book “All The Best,” he said he doesn’t remember calling her that.

5. He was an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States from 1989 to 1993.

6. Prior to assuming the presidency, Bush served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States from 1981 to 1989.

7. A member of the Republican Party, he had previously been a Congressman, Ambassador and Director of Central Intelligence.

8. During his career in public service, he was known simply as George Bush; since 2001, he has often been referred to as “George H. W. Bush”, “Bush 41”, or “George Bush Senior” in order to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States.

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