December 10

Franz Rosenzweig, author of 'The Star of Redemption,' died in Frankfurt with a sentence left unfinished.

Baburam Ghosh, later Swami Premananda, a direct monastic disciple of Ramakrishna who long managed Belur Math, was born at Antpur in Bengal.

Bhikkhu Bodhi, the American monk whose English translations of the Pali Nikayas became standard references for early Buddhism, was born on this day in 1944.

Abdullah Yusuf Ali, whose widely used English translation and commentary of the Qur'an appeared in the 1930s, died in London.

Karl Barth, the Swiss Reformed theologian behind the multi-volume Church Dogmatics, died at his home in Basel.

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and writer, died in Thailand while attending a monastic conference near Bangkok.

At the Stockholm ceremony, Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz was presented the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Arabic-language writer so honored.

The 14th Dalai Lama received the Nobel Peace Prize at the award ceremony in Oslo on this day in 1989.

The first Nobel Prizes were presented in Stockholm, with the physics prize going to Wilhelm Rontgen for X-rays; the prizes are still awarded every 10 December, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death.