Word: bikila
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Died. Abebe Bikila, 40, supple Ethiopian who became the first black African to win an Olympic gold medal when he won the marathon in his bare feet in Rome in 1960 and the only athlete to win the event twice in a row with his victory in Tokyo in 1964; of a brain hemorrhage; in Addis Ababa. An Ethiopian national hero and member of Emperor Haile Selassie's elite Imperial Guard, Bikila missed the hat trick in Mexico City in 1968 because of a strained ankle. He was paralyzed from the waist down as the result of an auto...