Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016), born Cassius Clay, was an American boxer who called himself "The Greatest" and became the first man to win the world heavyweight championship three times. Growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, he took up boxing at twelve after his bicycle was stolen, and at eighteen he won Olympic gold in Rome. In 1964 he won the heavyweight title, embraced Islam and took the name Muhammad Ali. In 1967 he declined induction into the U.S. Army on grounds of religious conscience, was stripped of his title and spent more than three years away from the ring; the Supreme Court ruled in his favor in 1971. He regained the title against George Foreman in 1974 and again in 1978. Living with Parkinson's disease from the 1980s, he devoted himself to humanitarian causes, lit the Olympic cauldron in Atlanta in 1996 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.