1. Richard Burr was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Nov. 30, 1955. His family later moved to North Carolina, and he graduated from Reynolds High School and later Wake Forest University, both in Winston-Salem.

2. Former Vice President Aaron Burr is an indirect relative.

3. He worked for Carswell Distributing Inc., a wholesale commercial products company, for more than 16 years. Starting as a salesman, he worked his way up to the position of national sales manager.

4. Burr, angered about rising taxes in the early 1990s, decided to enter politics. He lost his first run for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992. He ran again in 1994 and won, part of the Republican revolution led by then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. He served five terms.

5. While in the House, Burr was a member of the Commerce Committee's subcommittee on energy and power. In 1999, the subcommittee took up a piece of legislation that would repeal a law aimed at conserving water that mandated new toilets be low-flow. Showing his sense of humor, Burr read his remarks off a roll of toilet paper.

6. In 2004, Burr ran for the U.S. Senate and won, taking the seat left vacant when Democratic Sen. John Edwards decided to run for president. George Allen, then chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, introduced Burr and six other incoming freshman senators as "the Magnificent Seven."

9. Burr did not want to be on the intelligence committee. On the night he was first elected in 2004 to the Senate he told a friend he hoped he was not assigned to the panel.