Ten things you didn't know about Sarah Palin a week ago

Below are ten things we have learnt about Sarah Palin in the past turbulent week of her and her family's life, in no particular order:

1. Given her conservative views, her 17-year-old daughter's

pregnancy

has caused a media stir.

2. She likes to tell audiences that her favourite meal is

moose-meat stew

, preferably eaten after a day out on a snow machine.

3. She used to be

mayor of Wasilla

, an Alaskan town with an estimated population of 6,715.

4. She was

Miss Wasilla

a few years before that.

5. She was never a member of the

Alaskan Independence Party

, but her husband Todd was.

6. The McCain campaign says a report that she had an

affair

with an associate of her husband is rubbish.

7. There is an ongoing

investigation

into claims she fired a public safety commissioner after he refused to fire a state trooper who had divorced Palin's sister.

8. She read the sports news on an Alaskan TV station in the 1980s.

9. She likes

God and guns

.

10. Her

Wikipedia page

got a lot of editing in the day before she was announced as V-P candidate.