1. Gandhi was not the only leader to meet his end on January 30: that was also the date of the beheading of Charles I in 1649.
2. Gandhi’s birthday, October 2, is celebrated by the UN as the International Day Of Non-Violence.
3. Gandhi studied law at the Inner Temple in London, where his teachers often complained about his bad handwriting.
4. Gandhi was married at the age of 13 and had four sons before taking a vow of celibacy.
5. He was given the honorific title Mahatma (Sanskrit for great soul) in South Africa in 1914.
6. Philip Glass’s opera Satyagraha is based on the life and ideas of Gandhi and is in Sanskrit. It can be seen at the English National Opera from Thursday this week.
7. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” (Gandhi).
8. He wrote to Hitler in 1939 urging non-violence starting: “Dear friend, Friends have been urging me to write to you for the sake of humanity.”
9. Globally, there are more than 100 roads named after Gandhi of which over half are in India.
10. Gandhi’s funeral procession was five miles long.