On January 16, 1969, Jan Palach set himself on fire in Prague in protest against the August 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops. The 20-year-old university student died of his burns three days later.
Palach’s funeral turned into a mass demonstration of opposition against the Soviet Union’s crushing of the liberal reforms of the Prague Spring.
His act of protest inspired two other Czechs — Jan Zajic and Evzen Plocek — to commit suicide by self-immolation in the following months, followed by similar acts by protesters in other communist countries.
