The 26 year-old Tunisian street Mohamed Bouazizi was likely not aware of the 21 year-old Czech student Jan Palach, but it was Palach’s self-immolation in Czechoslovakia’s Wenceslas Square that paved the way for other revolutionaries and the politically changes they would go on to achieve through similar acts.

On this day, January 19, in 1969, Jan Palach went to the center of Pague, the capital of the his home country, doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire. He did so, according to a journalist who interviewed him shortly after the act (Palach survived for a few days longer), to protest his country’s timidness in the face of the crushing Soviet occupation.

Palach succeeded in his goal: a week later, his funeral, attended by half a million people, evolved into a large protest against Soviet rule. It would take a further 20 years until Czechoslovakia became independent of the Soviet Union, but Palach’s act was the first step in that revolution.