53 Years Ago: One Of The Most Famous Photos of All Time Was Taken in Maine
The photo above isn't it, but it's close. That one's from February 1964 in Miami, when Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston after he gave up at the opening of the seventh round. It would be the second of the two fights that would make history.
It was more than a year later, on May 25, 1965 when the two titans met again at a youth center in a New England city that most people in the world had never even heard of before.
The official title of the photograph, according to Getty Images, is "Muhammad Ali Taunting Sonny Liston," and it's one of the most widely known photographs of the twentieth century.
Here's the wicked cool part... It was taken right down the road in Lewiston.
The two fights between Ali and Liston were some of the most anticipated sporting events of the entire century, and this photograph, taken by Neil Leifer at the Central Maine Youth Center, shot around the world faster than a bullet from a gun. The Lewiston Youth Center is now called the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.
Sports Illustrated once called this photo one of the greatest photographs of all time, and one of the defining images of American sport.
...and you thought nothing cool ever happened in Maine, huh?