We all know what was reported in the media but there is a lot more to Saddam Hussein's story.
Born 28th April 1937 in Tikrit, Iraq.
His father died before he was born and his mother died in childbirth.
He was brought up by his maternal uncle and lived in his house until he married his cousin in 1963.
Birth sign: Taurus. Shared by Adolf Hitler and Ho Chi Min.
Hussein joined the revolutionary Baath party while he was a university student. His political career began in 1958 with a failed assassination attempt on Abdul-Karim Qassim, the Iraqi ruler. A close supporter of the ruler was killed by mistake. Hussein left Iraq and remained in exile until 1963.
In 1979 Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq. He ordered 20 foot posters of himself all over the country. In these he was depicted as a desert horseman, military man and even a young university graduate
He waged a campaign to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people by portraying himself as a family man, but this image was shattered in 1996 when he ordered the deaths of his sons-in-law after they defected to Jordan.
Between 1969 and 1996 at least seven unsuccessful assassination attempts were made against him. These attempts came from the Kurds, Communists and Shiites..
In 1990 Hussein invaded Kuwait and brought the wrath of the western world down upon himself. In 1991 he was ordered to destroy his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. In 1995 the UN weapons inspectors had almost finished their search but Saddam's son-in-law who had been over seeing Iraq's special weapons program defected to Jordan. It was this son-in-law who described huge efforts being made inside Iraq to conceal these weapons.
In 2003 his regime was finally toppled and Saddam was imprisoned and finally executed on 30th December 2006.
