xTaurus has compiled a handy timeline of key incidents in history regarding free speech. Some highlights:





399BC Socrates speaks to jury at his trial: ‘If you offered to let me off this time on condition I am not any longer to speak my mind... I should say to you, ‘Men of Athens, I shall obey the Gods rather than you.'’



1633 Galileo Galilei hauled before the Inquisition after claiming the sun does not revolve around the earth.



1770 Voltaire writes in a letter: ‘Monsieur l’abb�, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.’



1789 ‘The Declaration of the Rights of Man’, a fundamental document of the French Revolution, provides for freedom of speech .



1791 The First Amend-ment of the US Bill of Rights guarantees four freedoms: of religion, speech, the press and the right to assemble.





1962 One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn describes life in a labour camp during Stalin’s era. Solzhenitsyn is exiled in 1974.



2004 Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh is killed after release of his movie about violence against women in Islamic societies.



More