1917 - 2014
Louis Zamperini was an American Olympic athlete and World War II bombardier, born on January 26, 1917. He gained fame as a distance runner, competing in the 5000 meters at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and later served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during the war. Zamperini is best known for surviving a plane crash in the Pacific, enduring weeks adrift at sea, and his subsequent imprisonment in Japanese POW camps, experiences detailed in his autobiography "Unbroken."