4 Details You Didn't Know About Hillary

Now that Hillary Clinton's campaign for president has officially begun, the research teams for her opponents will almost definitely rev their dirt-digging machines into high gear to find anything to use against Clinton that the public doesn't know. It may be hard to find some new piece of information on a woman who has lived most of her life in the public eye. Most people know, for example, that her middle name is Diane, and that she was Wellesley College's first student commencement speaker in 1969, at the graduating class's request.

Now the heiress apparent for the Democratic nomination, her parents were Republicans, and at one time, Clinton was president Wellesley's chapter of Young Republicans, according to U.S. News and World Report. But by the time she graduated from Wellesley, her political views had turned toward the left, according to U.S. News.

Never one to shy away from speaking her mind, Clinton made headlines during Bill's first campaign for the White House when she remarked that yes, she had kept her career as a lawyer after her husband was elected Arkansas governor.

I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession.

Her remark sparked a heated debate between stay-at-home mothers and mothers who work outside the home, CNN reported (which unfortunately became known as the "Mommy Wars").

Despite her high profile, there are some things about Hillary Clinton which, while not exactly secrets, might surprise some of her younger supporters.

Her Brothers Can Be A Handful (Or Two)

A former White House official famously told The New York Times in 2001 that when it came to Hugh and Tony Rodham, ''You never wanted to hear their name come up in any context other than playing golf." Hugh and Tony Rodham have given their sister a fair amount of headaches since her husband became president, according to the Times, between Hugh's failed Senate campaign in Florida in 1994, Tony's failed marriage to the daughter of Sen. Barbara Boxer, and various business deals gone awry.

She Wrote To NASA At 13

In a 2012 speech at an event celebrating Amelia Earhardt, then-Secretary of State Clinton told the story of how she was inspired by President Kennedy's vision for the American space program, and wrote a letter to NASA asking to join, according to USA Today. They wrote back and told her there were no women astronauts.

So when I was about 13, I wrote to NASA and asked what I needed to do to try to be an astronaut. And of course, there weren’t any women astronauts, and NASA wrote me back and said there would not be any women astronauts. And I was just crestfallen. But then I realized I couldn’t see very well, and I wasn’t all that athletic, so probably I wouldn’t be the first woman astronaut anyway.

Although attempts to recover the letter have been unsuccessful (Clinton says she threw the letter away, and it's unlikely NASA would have kept a record), a similar unkind rejection letter from NASA to another young woman around the same time confirms that the space agency's public relations team was not the most tactful organization in the 1960s.

She Wrote Her Book "Hard Choices" In Longhand

"Doing it in longhand and then correcting it in longhand help me think through what I want to say," she said of her latest memoir, Hard Choices, according to USA Today.

She Named Her Daughter For a Joni Mitchell Song (Sung by Judy Collins)

Chelsea Victoria Clinton, the couple's only child, is named for the Joni Mitchell song "Chelsea Morning," but it was the version sung by Judy Collins that inspired the couple, according to The Washington Post. In her memoir Living History Clinton wrote that she and Bill were in the Chelsea neighborhood of London just after they got married, and heard that song. Bill then said to Hillary, "If we ever have a daughter, we should name her Chelsea."

Despite her highly public profile, Clinton somehow manages to surprise every so often. Will there be more tricks up her sleeve, or skeletons in her closet that are revealed during the 2016 campaign? We'll have to stay tuned to find out.

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