What Day Was Nelson Mandela's release from prison?

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Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison after 27 years of imprisonment for his opposition to South Africa's apartheid government.

His release followed a February 2 announcement by President F.W. de Klerk lifting the ban on the African National Congress, and preceded South Africa's first multiracial elections by four years, in which Mandela became president.

Mandela's walk to freedom, broadcast live worldwide, was watched by an estimated global television audience in the hundreds of millions, comparable in scale to major sporting events of the era.

Mandela had reportedly rejected an earlier conditional offer of release years before, refusing to renounce armed struggle against apartheid as a precondition, and was released unconditionally only once that demand was dropped.

Mandela went on to share the Nobel Peace Prize with F.W. de Klerk in 1993 for their joint work dismantling apartheid, four years before Mandela's own presidential inauguration.