On this day, August 6th, 1881, by a rock in Surlei on Lake Silvaplana, near Sils-Maria, the ring of the Eternal Recurrence/Return revealed itself to Nietzsche for the first time.

“The fundamental idea of the work — the idea of eternal recurrence, the highest formula of affirmation that can ever be attained — belongs to August of the year 1881. I made a note of the idea on a sheet of paper, with the postscript: ‘Six thousand feet beyond man and time.’ That day I happened to be wandering through the woods alongside the Lake of Silvaplana, and I halted not far from Surlei, beside a huge rock that towered aloft like a pyramid. It was then that the thought struck me.” (Nietzsche, Ecce Homo)

Photograph of the Nietzsche Rock by Armin Kübelbeck, licensed under CC BY‑SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Creative Commons Attribution‑ShareAlike 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Image has been adapted.