Rebel with a cause: The most—perhaps the only—humble moment of Qaddafi’s life was his birth in 1942, as the only child of a family in the animal-herding Qaddafa tribe of Libya. From his youth, Qaddafi admired then Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, an anticolonialist and Palestinian sympathizer. Muammar’s student years were spent organizing fervent protests that got him kicked out of school, and setting up a Libyan chapter of the left-leaning Free Officers movement that would soon catapult him into political power. In 1969, the 27-year-old Qaddafi led a handful of fellow members in a successful coup against the ruling King Idris.