Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison. For eighteen of those years, he was on Robben Island, off the coast of Cape Town, cracking limestone in a quarry under the South African sun. He was permitted one letter and one visitor every six months. The glare from the quarry permanently damaged his eyesight. Born Rolihlahla Mandela in Mvezo, Transkei on July 18, 1918, he was the son of a Thembu chief. He attended the University of Fort Hare and the University of the Witwatersrand, where he studied law. He joined the African National Congress in 1944 and helped found its Youth League. After the National Party came to power in 1948 and formalized apartheid, Mandela became a leader of the resistance. He initially advocated nonviolent protest. After the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, in which police killed 69 unarmed Black protesters, he co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the armed wing of the ANC, and directed a campaign of sabotage against government infrastructure. He was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to life imprisonment at the Rivonia Trial in 1964. On Robben Island and later at Pollsmoor and Victor Verster prisons, he became the world's most famous political prisoner. International sanctions, economic pressure, and internal resistance gradually forced the apartheid government to negotiate. President F.W. de Klerk announced Mandela's release on February 11, 1990. Mandela walked free, holding his then-wife Winnie's hand, before a crowd of thousands. When he walked free, the world expected rage. What came instead was a man who invited his former jailer to his presidential inauguration. He negotiated with de Klerk to dismantle apartheid, a process that could have plunged South Africa into civil war at any point. He became South Africa's first Black president in 1994, inheriting a country on the edge. It didn't burn. He served one term and stepped down voluntarily. He died on December 5, 2013, at 95. The question his whole life answered: what does it take to forgive something unforgivable?