* WHO IS AL GORE?

-- Albert Arnold Gore Jr. was born in Washington on March 31, 1948, to Albert Gore Sr., who represented Tennessee in Congress for 32 years, and Pauline Gore, a homemaker and law school graduate.

-- As a toddler Gore bounced on the knee of Richard Nixon, the California Republican who years later, as president, helped oust Gore's Democratic father from Congress.

-- After graduating from Harvard, he married Mary Elizabeth "Tipper" Aitcheson, volunteered for the military and served as an Army journalist in Vietnam.

-- Upon his return home, he became a divinity student and went to work for The Nashville Tennessean as a reporter. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Gore said he was turned off by politics.

* A CHANGE OF HEART:

-- However while a reporter in the mid-1970s, he developed a personal appetite for it and in 1976 a House seat from central Tennessee became vacant and he won it.

* VICE-PRESIDENT:

-- In 1992, four years after his first White House bid, Gore considered running again, but decided against it.

-- Bill Clinton won the nomination that year, and picked Gore as his running mate. "We raised him for it," Gore's father gushed.

-- As vice president, Gore's squeaky clean image was tarnished when he became embroiled in a fund-raising scandal.

* RUN FOR PRESIDENT:

-- In August 2000, Gore won the Democratic Party nomination for US president, choosing Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate; in the November general election they ran against the Republican ticket of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

-- Gore got around 300,000 more votes nationally than Bush. But Bush, with the help of Florida, got the needed state-based 270 electoral votes to win the White House.

* A NEW CAREER:

-- Since then Gore has dedicated himself to raising public awareness of global warming.

-- Gore produced a documentary about a slide show he has given on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth". The short film was presented in Cannes in 2006 and won an Oscar in 2007 for best documentary.