Muhammad Ali
Olympic champion at eighteen, world heavyweight champion at twenty-two after the fight with Sonny Liston that nobody expected him to win. He announced at the same time that he had accepted Islam and was giving up the name Cassius Clay. In 1967 he refused to go to the war in Vietnam and lost the title, his licence and three and a half years of his career — and won his case in the Supreme Court. On his return he took the title twice more: from Foreman in Kinshasa in 1974 and from Spinks in 1978. Parkinson’s disease took his speech, and for his last thirty years he was a public figure of another kind — in 1996 he lit the Olympic flame in Atlanta with shaking hands.
He was born in Louisville, Kentucky on 17 January 1942 at 18:35 Central time; the hour is taken from his birth certificate.