Origin
Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island in 1964, and was the 466th prisoner to arrive that year. The prison administration's scheme of numbering prisoners was to follow the sequence number of the prisoner (466 in his case), with the last two digits of the year (64).
The number was imposed on him by the prison for over 25 years, until his release in 1990. "Prisoner 46664" continues to be used, as a reverential title for him, and the Nelson Mandela Foundation uses 46664.com as its website address.(see below)
Shortly before Joe Strummer's death, he and U2's Bono co-wrote the song "46664" for Mandela as part of the campaign against AIDS in Africa.
Read more about this topic: 46664 (concerts)
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by, the power that makes and forever re-creates man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)