FACTBOX-Former U.S. President Bill Clinton

Aug 4 (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, 62, made a surprise visit to North Korea on Tuesday to try to win the release of two jailed U.S. journalists, a move some analysts said could mark the isolated state's return to dialogue over nuclear weapons.

Here are a few facts on Bill Clinton:

CLINTON AS PRESIDENT:

* In November 1992, the Clinton-Al Gore ticket defeated incumbent president George H.W. Bush, becoming the 42nd president of the United States. He won another term in 1996, defeating Republican candidate Bob Dole.

* In 1998 he became the second U.S. president to be impeached but was acquitted by the Senate in 1999.

* In 1993 he invited Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organisation chairman Yasser Arafat to Washington to sign an historic agreement that granted limited Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

* In 1998 and 2000 Clinton was hailed as a peacemaker in visits to Ireland and Northern Ireland, and in 2000 he became the first U.S. president to visit Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War.

* Bill Clinton, while in office, sought to improve ties with North Korea, and in 1994 former U.S. President Jimmy Carter visited Pyongyang to defuse the crisis over its nuclear programme.

Clinton also exchanged high-level envoys near the end of his term fuelling expectations that Washington and Pyongyang would end decades of hostility and normalise ties.

AFTER THE PRESIDENCY:

* In 2001 he founded the William J. Clinton Foundation, a philanthropic organisation that addressed various global issues through such programmes as the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative, the Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative, the Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton Climate Initiative. * In 2005 after a tsunami in the Indian Ocean caused widespread death and devastation, Clinton was appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to serve as a special envoy for relief efforts, a position he held until 2007.

LIFE DETAILS:

* Clinton was born in Hope, Arkansas, in Aug. 19, 1946, the son of a travelling salesman who died in a car accident three months before his son was born.

* Clinton enrolled at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1964 and graduated in 1968 with a degree in international affairs.

* In 1974 he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1975 he married a fellow Yale Law graduate, attorney Hillary Rodham. In the following year he was elected attorney general of Arkansas, and in 1978 he won the governorship, becoming the youngest governor the country had seen in 40 years.