nobel peace prize

there has been a lot of talk about the nobel peace prize this week. whatever you think of the award this year, it has become a good history lesson for me. i went ahead and looked up all the past nobel peace prize winners. it is an impressive list. let me point out a few for you:

- 1919 Thomas Woodrow Wilson, President, formed the League of Nations (which would eventually become the UN)
- 1931 Jane Addams, sociologist (this one was just impressive for a woman to get it at this time)
- Nothing was given during WWII
- 1950 Ralph Bunche, mediated between Palestine and Israel
- 1964 Martin Luther King Jr.
- 1965 UNICEF
- 1973 Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho (he declined the prize after negotiating the peace accord....i'll have to look into why he turned it down)
- 1979 Mother Theresa
- 1984 Desmond Tutu, worked on South African apartheid
- 1986 Elie Wiesel, author, Holocaust activist (this is an unabashed plug for his writings)
- 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev, President of USSR, brought Cold War to end
- 1991 Aung San Suu Kyi, human rights advocate in Burma
- 1993 Nelson Mandela
- 1994 Yasser Arafat, Yitzak Rabin, Shimon Peres, working toward Middle East Peace
- 2006 Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank, promoting economic and social development for the lower class (again, another plug for a book...check this one out!)

so that is just a quick overview. lots of other great people that have gotten the award as well. all i know is that when i get the nobel prize, i don't want a good chunk of people questioning why i got it....lots of neat things to aspire to though...it is making me think about more good non-fiction books i can get from the library!