Full Name=Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti. Profession=Iraqi politician, revolutionary leader and authoritarian president who ruled as the fifth President of Iraq and de facto head of state from 1979 until his overthrow in the 2003 United States–led invasion; Nationality=Iraqi; Born=28 April 1937; Birthplace=Al-Awja village near Tikrit, Saladin Governorate, Iraq; Generation= Silent Generation (member of the 1928–1945 cohort that came of age in the post–Second World War era); Chinese Zodiac=Fire Ox (born in the Year of the Fire Ox, which ran from 11 February 1937 to 30 January 1938); Zodiac Sign=Taurus; Age in 2026=89 (would have turned 89 on 28 April 2026). Marital Status=Married, with a principal arranged marriage to his cousin Sajida Khairallah Talfah and later a second, controversial marriage to physician Samira Shahbandar while still married to Sajida; Children=Five (two sons, Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein, and three daughters, Raghad, Rana and Hala, who together formed the core of his powerful and feared presidential family circle); Description=Iraqi Ba'ath Party strongman who rose from a poor Sunni Arab family in the village of Al-Awja near Tikrit to become vice president after engineering the 1968 Ba'athist coup, then consolidated personal power as president, chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council and commander in chief, overseeing nationalization of Iraq’s oil industry, ambitious but uneven modernization, and an apparatus of pervasive security services and personality cult while also launching the protracted and devastating Iran–Iraq War in 1980, ordering the 1990 invasion and occupation of Kuwait that triggered the Gulf War, employing widespread repression, torture and chemical weapons against Kurds and dissidents, and ultimately becoming one of the late twentieth century’s most infamous and polarizing leaders, internationally notorious yet also regarded by some supporters in the Arab world as a symbol of resistance to Western intervention; Cause of Death=Execution by hanging at a military facility in Baghdad on 30 December 2006 after conviction by the Iraqi High Tribunal for crimes against humanity, including willful killing, illegal imprisonment, deportation and torture related to the Dujail massacre.