1896: Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel, who established the Nobel Prizes, dies.
1901: The Nobel Prizes are awarded for the first time in Stockholm.
1903: Pierre and Marie Curie are awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Henri Becquerel, for their work on radioactivity. Marie Curie becomes the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize.
1911: Marie Curie is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of two new elements, radium and polonium. She becomes the first scientist to be honoured twice with a Nobel Prize.
1915: French writer Romain Rolland receives the Nobel Prize in Literature for his entire body of work.
1920: The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to Norwegian poet Knut Hamsun, while the Nobel Peace Prize goes to US President Woodrow Wilson for his efforts to restore peace in Europe.
1921: The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to French poet Anatole France.
1925: Irish writer George Bernard Shaw receives the Nobel Prize in Literature.
1929: German writer Thomas Mann is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
1950: American writer William Faulkner receives the Nobel Prize in Literature.
1952: The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Albert Schweitzer, Alsatian theologian and musician, who abandoned a distinguished career as a Bach virtuoso to establish a hospital in French Equatorial Africa.
1953: The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to British conservative politician Winston Churchill for his mastery of historical and autobiographical writing and for his oratory.
1963: Greek poet Yiorgos Seferis is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
1965: Soviet writer Mikhail Sholokhov receives the Nobel Prize in Literature.
1969: Irish writer Samuel Beckett is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
1979: Greek poet Odysseas Elytis is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
1994: The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded jointly to Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
1998: The Palestine Liberation Organization removes from its Charter articles denying Israel’s right to exist.
2003: The United States excludes companies from countries opposed to the Iraq war from contracts for Iraq’s reconstruction, prompting strong reactions from France, Germany, Canada and Russia.
2006: Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet dies.
2010: In Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, an archive documenting in detail the genocide of the Tutsi is presented.
2011: Greek lyricist Sotia Tsotou dies.
2012: Greek poet and lyricist Alkis Alkaios dies.
This article was originally published on Polignosi.