According to an interview to appear in the upcoming New York Times Magazine, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright can leg-press 400 pounds. According to Editor & Publisher, “this follows a discussion of how she does not expect to re-marry, partly because, as she says, “I’m intimidating, don’t you think?”

Yeah, I’d say that she’s just a bit intimidating.

When I think of Madeline Albright, I can’t help but think of the time that when walked into an important meeting in Albania and the Albanian delegation mistook her for a maid. From The Progressive Review:

“When a bunch of Albanians mistook Madeleine Albright for a hotel cleaning lady, the secretary of state spewed a most-undiplomatic, and untranslatable, stream of invective, a newspaper reports. A State Department spokesman wouldn’t comment on the New York Daily News report that Albright was mistaken for a maid during last year’s peace negotiations for Kosovo in Rambouillet, France. Albright at first wasn’t recognized by the Albanian delegation when she walked into their room, it said.

“‘One member of the delegation, who didn’t realize who she was, and probably thinking she was some cleaning lady because it was after midnight, simply said to her, ‘Give us five minutes and please go away,’ recalled Albanian diplomat Dugagjin Gorani in War on Europe, a British TV program. Instead, Albright exploded in rage, swearing at the group, according to the reports. ‘Mrs. Albright started using explicit language which the translators never could translate into Albanian,’ says Veton Surroi, another member of the delegation.”

On the nicer side, Albright does praise current Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, who was taught and mentored by Albright’s father:

Another highlight of the Q & A is her commentary on the fact that her father, Josef Korbel, a Czech diplomat who became dean of the school of international relations at the University of Denver, happened to train two future secretaries of state. The other was Condoleezza Rice. “What I like about her,” Albright says, “is that she continues to give credit to the fact that my father had a big influence on her.”

When Korbel died in 1977, Rice sent a pot of flowers in the shape of a piano, and Albright’s mother referred to her as “your father’s favorite student.”