Adolph Gustav Kiefer is an American former competition swimmer, Olympic champion, former world record-holder, and inventor and innovator of new products related to aquatics competition. He was the first man in the world to swim 100-yard backstroke in fewer than sixty seconds. Kiefer was born in Chicago, Illinois, and attended Theodore Roosevelt High School, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia College. He became the first man to break the one-minute mark in the 100-yard backstroke while competing as a 16-year-old in the Illinois High School Championships of 1935, swimming 59.8 seconds. His 1936 Illinois state championship backstroke time of 58.5 seconds was the Illinois state high-school record until 1960. On April 6, 1940 Kiefer set another world record, swimming the 100-yard backstroke in 57.9 seconds. He broke twenty-three records after breaking the one-minute backstroke mark. Kiefer set a world record for 100-m backstroke of 1:04.8 on January 18, 1936 at Brennan Pools in Detroit, Michigan. Seventeen year-old Kiefer represented the United States at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. On August 14, Kiefer won the gold medal in the men's 100-meter backstroke. 

June 27th, 1918 in Chicago as Adolph Gustav Kiefer  /  Died:   May 5th, 2017 - aged 98