1. By Lily Allder

2. Born on June 3, 1967 in New York City Younger son of the writer Wyatt Emory Cooper and the artist, designer, writer, and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt II of the prominent Vanderbilt Family of New York. As a baby, Cooper was photographed to be in Harper’s Bazaar. At the age of three, he was a guest on The Tonight Show when he appeared with his mother. From the age of 10 to 13, he modeled with Ford Models and for Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Macy’s. Father died on January 5, 1978. At the age of 17, Cooper went to Southern Africa in a 13-ton British Army truck, and contracted Malaria, and was hospitalized in Kenya.

3. Coopers older brother committed suicide on July 22, 1988 at the age of 23. Carter’s suicide is what sparked Cooper to become a journalist. Cooper graduated from The Dalton School in 1985. To continue his education, he attended Yale University, then resided in Trumbull College. He studied Political Science and International Relations. Graduated in 1989. In college, spent two summers as an intern at the Central Intelligence Agency. After first correspondence work, Cooper went to live in Vietnam for a year and studied Vietnamese, but he forgot how to speak it.

4. In 1992, Cooper was a fact checker for the news show, Channel 1 which appears in junior high and high school classrooms. After trying to gain entry-level employment with ABC, and failing, Cooper had a friend make him a fake press pass. He then went into Burma and met with students fighting the Burmese government. He was able to sell his homemade news segments to Channel 1. After returning from Vietnam, he continued reporting on war torn areas in the world, like Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda. Slowly, Cooper was getting too used to the violent scenes in these countries, and he decided he would report on lighter news stories. In 1995, Cooper became a correspondent for ABC news. Eventually, he rose to the position of co-anchor on it’s over night World News Now program. In 2000, he became the host of the reality show, The Mole.

5. After The Mole’s second season, he went to CNN to broadcast. He covered many important stories in 2005. In October of 2007, he began hosting the documentary, Planet in Peril with Sanjay Gupta and Jeff Corwin on CNN. In 2008, he, Gupta and Lisa Ling did a sequel, Planet in Peril: Battle Lines. In 2008, he also started hosting CNN Heroes: An All Star Tribute.

6. In 2005, Cooper covered some very important stories about topics such as the Tsunami Damage in Sri Lanka, the Cedar Revolution in Beirut, Lebanon; the death of Pope John Paul II, the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, and the Niger famine from Maradi.

7. http://www.artsjournal.com/man/archives2 0050301.shtml#97980 http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/1 4301/index1.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson_Coo per