Oh How The Mighty Separate

The office of France's new President, Nicolas Sarkozy, yesterday announced his separation from wife Cecilia. The Associated Press took the opportunity to note some other break ups in the history of great men:

In 1996, a judge granted Nelson Mandela a divorce because his wife, Winnie, had been unfaithful. The South African president had separated from her in 1992 after she was convicted and fined in her bodyguards' kidnapping of four kids.

Andreas Papandreou, Greece's late prime minister, left his wife in the late 80s, when he was about 70, after having an affair with a 35-year-old flight attendant. He later divorced his wife and married the flight attendant, Dimitra Liani.

Argentinian president Carlos Menem locked his wife, Zulema Yoma de Menem, out of the presidential residence in 1990 after she knocked his policies one too many times. On one occasion while he was out, she invited journalists over for a barbecue to roast him and his leadership. She later filed for divorce, accusing Menem of adultery. Menem married former Miss Universe Cecilia Bolocco of Chile in 2001, but announced this May that they had separated — after photographs were published of her sunbathing topless with an Italian friend in Miami.

Our favorite, though, is the story of Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, who cut off water and power to the quarters of his wife, Susana Higuchi, and stripped her of the title of first lady in 1994 after she accused him of tolerating widespread corruption in his administration. He said she was disloyal, as well as "unstable and easily influenced" by his political foes.

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