1) No Philippine president has ever been impeached. Congress had previously tried to impeach three Filipino Presidents: Elpidio Quirino in 1949, Diosdado Macapagal in 1963 and Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. All three attempts failed. Congress could not get the required number of votes to even get to first base.

2) A 59-year-old widow was the first to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Estrada. On April 11, businesswoman Corazon Valenzuela submitted the bill of particulars in a two-page letter to House Speaker Manuel Villar and other House members. Valenzuela had previously landed in the news pages for heckling Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile while he was delivering an angry speech in the Senate over the theft of his Mitsubishi Pajero.

3) Senate Minority Leader Teofisto Guingona first formally asked President Estrada to resign on April 3. He said that he was making this call independent of the opposition Lakas party that he headed as president. In a two-page open letter, Guingona told Mr. Estrada that he should step down or risk facing impeachment.

4) A visiting Indian seer predicted back in Jan. 22 that President Estrada would finish his term in 2004 in good health. Indian yogi and astrologer Sri Shen Ser Singh, a supposed close associate of the late President Ferdinand Marcos, claimed that he also told Marcos that the latter would rule the country for 20 years. The seer also predicted that Estrada’s successor would be a man.

5) In the United States, three presidents have faced impeachment -- Andrew Johnson, where the Senate trial failed by only one vote, Richard Nixon who resigned in 1974 instead of being convicted in the Senate and Bill Clinton who was impeached by the House but absolved by the Senate.

6) On Jan. 10, 1842, a certain Mr. Botts introduced an impeachment resolution against the 10th US president, John Tyler (1841-1845). This did not prosper, however, because the House of Representatives refused to either adopt the resolution or refer it to a select committee for investigation.

7) Oregon is the only US state that does not provide for the removal of executive and judicial officers by impeachment. Though exact procedures vary slightly in the different states, generally they are similar to federal impeachment.

8) Sen. William Blount of Tennessee was the first American official to be subject to a federal impeachment case. On July 8, 1797, the Senate voted to expel Sen. Blount. He was acquitted on Jan. 14, 1799. Since then, the US Congress has never initiated an impeachment proceeding against a member of the legislature.