James Earl Carter Jr. was born on October 1, 1924, at the Wise Sanitarium in Plains, Georgia, a hospital where his mother was employed as a registered nurse.

Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946 with a Bachelor of Science degree and joined the Navy. In 1952, he began an association with the US Navy's fledgling nuclear submarine program, then led by Captain Hyman G. Rickover.

After his father's death, Carter gave up his military career to save the family peanut farm. The transition from Navy to agribusinessman was difficult because his first-year harvest failed due to drought, but he managed to keep the farm afloat and turn it into a profitable business.

Carter reported seeing an unidentified flying object while preparing to give a speech at a Lions Club meeting in Leary, Georgia. In a 2005 interview, he would later recount: "All of a sudden, one of the men looked up and said, 'Look, over in the west!' And there was a bright light in the sky. We all saw it. And then the light, it got closer and closer to us. And then it stopped, I don't know how far away, but it stopped beyond the pine trees. And all of a sudden it changed color to blue, and then it changed to red, then back to white. And we were trying to figure out what in the world it could be, and then it receded into the distance."

Carter was sworn in as the 76th Governor of Georgia on January 12, 1971. He declared in his inaugural speech that "the time of racial discrimination is over. ... No poor, rural, weak, or black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity for an education, a job or simple justice."

In 1973, he appeared on the game show What's My Line, where a group of celebrity panelists would try to guess his occupation. None recognized him and it took several rounds of question-and-answer before movie critic Gene Shalit correctly guessed he was a governor.

When he entered the Democratic Party presidential primaries, he was considered to have little chance against nationally-known politicians. In fact, his name recognition was just two percent.

The Camp David Accords were agreements between Israel and Egypt signed on September 17, 1978, that led in the following year to a peace treaty between those two countries, the first such treaty between Israel and any of its Arab neighbours.

Carter spent considerable time and effort promoting renewable energy sources. To demonstrate his commitment, he installed solar water heating panels on the White House in 1979, decades before such a practice became commonplace. The panels were removed by the Reagan administration and later reinstalled under George W. Bush.

After Soviet forces failed to heed Carter's mandate to pull their troops out of Afghanistan, Carter committed to a radical step--he prevented American athletes from competing in the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, the first time the U.S. had failed to appear in the international competition. Canada, West Germany, Japan, and around 50 other countries followed Carter's lead.