Muammar gaddafi brief biography of joe

On October 20, 2011, 69-year-old Colonel Muammar Gaddafi became the first leader to be killed in the Arab Spring in his hometown on the Mediterranean coast of Sirte, Libya.

Gaddafi was born in June 1942 in a tent near Sirte. Before joining the military, Gaddafi studied at the University of Libya.

He assumed the leadership of Libya in 1969 after overthrowing King Idris I with a group of revolutionary army officers.

In his early days of rule, his views were largely influenced by pan-Arabism. Opposed to U.S. interests, Gaddafi won little support from Washington and the West. In 1972, he encouraged the Arab World to fight the West.

Ronald Reagan famously called Gaddafi the "mad dog of the Middle East" after the Berlin nightclub bombing in 1986 that killed one American serviceman.

Gaddafi distanced himself and his country even further from the U.S. and the U.K. after the 1988 Pan Am 103 Bombing, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, and killed 270 people. A series