Muhammed Ali

 

The Greatest Muhammed Ali Trivia Questions

On this day in 1967, boxing champion  Muhammad Ali  refused to be inducted into the U.S. Army and is immediately stripped of his heavyweight title. See if you can answer the following trivia questions about the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time...

Who Was Muhammad Ali Originally Named After? Ali was only 22 when he won the heavyweight title away from Floyd Patterson. Ali, whose name was originally Cassius Clay like his father, was named after a white abolitionist who lived during the 19th century and freed 40 the slaves he had inherited. Clay endangered his life by supporting the abolitionist cause. Despite being shot, stabbed and beaten, he survived to age 92.

How Many Times Did Ali Win the Heavyweight Title? Ali won the heavyweight championship three times as well as a gold medal in the Olympics in 1960. During his career, he won 56 boxing matches — 37 were knockouts, and it is estimated that he absorbed hits 200,000 times during this period. His career lasted for 21 years, and he retired from the ring after losing his last fight to Trevor Berbick.

Why Was Ali’s Boxing License Suspended? After Ali converted to Islam, he refused to be inducted into military service as during the Vietnam War in 1967. Ali was arrested, his boxing license was suspended and his title stripped. His license was returned by a New York State Supreme Court decision in 1970, and one year later, his conviction was overturned in the U.S. Supreme Court.

What Surprising Person Challenged Ali to a Boxing Match? Basketball star Wilt Chamberlain challenged Ali to a boxing match, which would have been interesting because the basketball great had a reach that was formidable, was 7’1” compared to Ali’s 6’3” and outweighed the champ by about 40 pounds. Ali began whispering the word “timber” at every opportunity during the conference and in answer to reporter’s questions. Chamberlain was shaken and left to talk to his lawyers, and they announced that there would be no boxing match between the two men.

Which of Ali’s Boxing Matches Was Held at 4:00 A.M.? The “Rumble in the Jungle” between Ali, 32, and George Foreman, 25, was sponsored by Mobutu Sese Seko, the president of Zaire, in 1974. The match was held in Kinshasa. It was scheduled for before dawn in Africa so that audiences in America could watch the fight during prime time television. In this match, Ali won by a knockout in the eighth round, regaining the heavyweight title he had been stripped of seven years earlier.

Where Did Ali Negotiate an American Prisoner Release? Ali traveled to Iraq in 1990 to meet with Saddam Hussein and try to negotiate for the release of 15 American hostages. In his negotiation, Ali promised to return to America with an account of Iraq that was honest. All 15 hostages were released and returned to the United States with the prizefighter.

As ostriches are the largest birds in the world they also have the largest eyes of any bird in the world. Measuring at 5 centimeters in diameter from front to back, the ostrich eye is five times bigger than the human eye and any other land animal. The ostrich's eyes are about the size of billiard balls. They take up so much room in the skull that the ostrich's brain is actually smaller than either one of its eyeballs. This may be why the ostrich, despite its tremendous running speed, is not very good at eluding predators: It tends to run in circles.

President Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant on this day in 1822, in Point Pleasant, Ohio. When Grant was 17, his father arranged for him to enter the United States Military Academy at West Point. A clerical error had listed him as Ulysses S. Grant. Not wanting to be rejected by the school, he changed his name on the spot. Ulysses S. Grant served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. During the American Civil War Grant led the Union Army as its commanding general to victory over the Confederacy with the supervision of President Abraham Lincoln.