With jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo and his family barred from accepting his Nobel Peace Prize at the Dec. 10 ceremony in Oslo, the Nobel Prize committee once again finds itself in the international headlines.

Xiaobo is hardly the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to generate controversy. U.S. President Barack Obama's 2009 victory was slammed as being both premature and undeserved, while Jimmy Carter's 2002 win was viewed as a slap in the face to the Bush administration. Indigenous Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchú's 1992 win came under fire when it was revealed details included in her famed memoirs may have been fabricated, while radical German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky's 1935 victory sparked the ire of Adolf Hitler, who forbade all German nationals from accepting further awards.