Dostoyevsky sentenced to death for links to a radical circle (1849), and China releases dissident Wei Jingsheng from jail on medical grounds (1997). Born on this day: José Saramago, Tiberius and Chinua Achebe. Died: Milton Friedman, Clark Gable and Ibn al-ʿArabī.
27 events, 52 births and 55 deaths on this date.
The young writer was condemned for belonging to a group that read banned books critical of the Tsar. His sentence was softened at the last moment to hard labour in Siberia, an experience that later shaped his novel The House of the Dead.
Vasily Perov · Public domainWei Jingsheng, a long-serving democracy campaigner, was let out of prison after almost eighteen years, officially because of his health. He had been jailed for pressing for political reform, and his release drew attention abroad to the treatment of dissidents.
After more than fifteen years without formal ties, Washington and Moscow agreed to open diplomatic relations. The move opened the way for embassies and direct contact between two states that had been wary of each other since the Bolshevik revolution.
The United Nations agency for education, science and culture was set up as a successor to the League of Nations' intellectual cooperation body. Its founding aim was to build peace by encouraging nations to work and talk together.
Tiberius entered the world in Rome to a politician father, Tiberius Claudius Nero, and a mother, Livia, who would later marry Augustus. He went on to become the second Roman emperor, ruling from AD 14 until his death in 37.
Didier Descouens · Public domain
Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann made lysergic acid diethylamide in his Basel laboratory, the compound later known as LSD. Years afterwards he went on to study psilocybin, the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms.
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Portuguese novelist who won the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, known for fables that reimagine well-known stories from a sceptical angle. He was also an outspoken atheist and critic of the Catholic Church and the European Union.
Unknown author Unknown author · CC BY 2.0
Tiberius became the second Roman emperor after succeeding his stepfather Augustus, and was remembered as a capable general who extended Rome's northern frontier. He was reluctant to rule and his reign grew increasingly suspicious and troubled.
Didier Descouens · Public domain
Achebe was a Nigerian novelist and critic, best remembered for Things Fall Apart, the 1958 novel that reshaped how African stories were read in English. He is often called the father of modern African literature, though he rejected the label.
Stuart C. Shapiro · CC BY 3.0
Milton Friedman was an American economist who won the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and led the monetarist challenge to Keynesian economics. He argued that the money supply drove inflation and that unemployment could not be held below its natural rate for long.
Bachrach Studios · Public domain
Known as the King of Hollywood, Gable won the Best Actor Oscar for It Happened One Night and became one of the most bankable stars of his era. He died suddenly in 1960, aged 59, shortly after completing his final film, The Misfits.
Public domain
Andalusian mystic and philosopher whose teachings on the unity of being shaped Sufi thought across much of the Muslim world. Remembered as the Shaykh al-Akbar, he left a vast body of writing, though only a fraction survives.
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain
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