If he hadn’t died last February, Max Schmeling would have been 100 years old this year. He was Germany’s most successful boxer and was world champion from 1930 to 1932. On 12th June 1930 he won the title on a foul in the fourth round against Jack Sharkey in New York. Just over two years lateer, on 21st June 1832, Schmeling lost it back to Sharkey, causing Schmeling’s manager Max Jacobs to utter the immortal words over the radio: "We wuz robbed!" On 19th June 1936, by which time he was married to the film actress Anny Ondra, Schmeling astounded the boxing world by knocking out the up-and-coming Joe Louis in the twelth round at the Yankee Stadium, New York. A crowd of 42,088 paid &36;547,541 to see the fight. From that point, however, Schmeling became a somewhat reluctant display figure for Hitler’s racial propaganda which hailed his victory as a triumph for the Nordic race over black athletes. On 22 June 1938, by which time Louis had become world champion, the two boxers met again (this time 70,043 spectators paying &36;1,015,012), and Louis wasted no time in beating Schmeling, knocking him out in only two minutes and four seconds of the first round. Schmeling was a paratrooper in World War II and took part in the assault on Crete on 20 May 1941. In 1957 he bought the Coca-Cola franchise in Germany and retired a very rich man, while retaining his status as a popular sports personality in both Germany and the USA.

MAX SCHMELING: 28 September 1905; Klein Luckow, Germany (53N46 13E43); 12:00 noon MET (11:00 GMT). Gunther Menzer quotes him to various German astrologers.

Alfred C. Kinsey, Professor of Zoology at Indiana Unversity from 1920, caused a sensation in the USA in the years following World War II. At the Unversity in 1942 he founded the Institute for Sex Research. In 1948 he published Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (better known by its subtitle, The Kinsey Report) which became a huge best-seller. Based on 18,500 interviews, it attracted much attention from fellow scientists and the general public, although there was much criticism of the interview techniques he used. Himself a bisexual, he and his wife experimented with many of the sexual variations he wrote about. In 1953 he bought out another book, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female, which was even more radical than the first. Kinsey died on 25 August 1956, convinced that his work had been futile and a victim of American censorship and prudery, but he was nonetheless the first scientifically reputable researcher into sex. Last year saw the release of the film Kinsey with Liam Neeson in the title role.

ALFRED CHARLES KINSEY: 23 June 1894; Hoboken, New Jersey; time not known. Kinsey: A Biography by Jonathon Gathorne-Hardy (1998; revised edition 2005).