March 10, 1957 - Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Muhammad bin 'Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. A pan-Islamist and Islamic extremist, bin Laden organized and funded numerous jihadist or anti-Western militants and terrorist attacks worldwide.

Bin Laden was raised into Sunni Islam by his wealthy family in Saudi Arabia. He left the country to help the Afghan mujahideen fight the Soviet Union in the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989), and in 1984, he co-founded Maktab al-Khidamat, which recruited foreigners into the mujahideen. In 1988, bin Laden founded al-Qaeda to enact violent jihad worldwide. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, he returned to Saudi Arabia. His public beliefs led to his 1991 expulsion from the country, upon which he moved with al-Qaeda to Sudan.

Content sourced from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama bin Laden under CC BY-SA 4.0.