1984 — Egypt's Forgotten First President

On August 28, 1984, Mohamed Naguib, Egypt's first president, died in Cairo at eighty-three, largely erased from the history he helped make. The decorated general had fronted the 1952 revolution that toppled King Farouk, standing at the head of a movement that ended the monarchy and opened a new republican age for Egypt.

Yet he was outmaneuvered by Nasser within eighteen months and spent years under house arrest. Released by Sadat in 1971, he lived quietly until the state finally honored him with a military funeral. His death recalled a founder pushed aside by the very revolution he had fronted.