Nobel Peace Prize? - Who? When? Why?

Did  You Know?
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE GUYS!
President Barack Obama was not the only American president to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, of the ninety seven people who have been awarded this most auspicious honor 21 have been Americans and four of them were presidents of the U.S. not to mention, one vice-president.

According to the Nobel Foundation, the Americans who have been Nobel Peace Prize recipients, starting with the first are...

1. 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt, for his "happy role in bringing to an end the bloody war" between Japan and Russia in 1904-5.

2. 1912 Elihu Root, secretary of state under President Theodore Roosevelt and then a United States senator, for his work in international arbitration.

3. 1919 President Woodrow Wilson, for his role in ending World War I. The Noble Foundation says his 1918 speech on the war to a joint session of Congress was "a decisive stroke in winning that war."

4. 1925 Vice President Charles G. Dawes, shared with the British statesman Sir Austen Chamberlain, for a 1924 plan to collect reparations from Germany after World War I.

5. 1929 Frank B. Kellogg, Secretary of State for President Coolidge, for the Kellogg-Briand Treaty, which renounced war as an instrument of national policy.

6. 1931 Nicholas Murray Butler, longtime president of Columbia University and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was "influential" in persuading Andrew Carnegie to provide $10 million to establish the endowment in 1910.

7. 1931 Jane Addams, pioneer of the settlement house movement in America, for her work with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She was the group's first president.

8. 1945 Cordell Hull, secretary of state for more than a decade under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, for "his fight against isolationism at home" and his role in establishing the United Nations.

9. 1946 Rev. John R. Mott, a pioneer in worldwide missionary efforts, for uniting "millions of young people in work for the Christian ideals of peace and tolerance between nations."

10. 1946 Emily Greene Balch, a professor of economics and sociology at Wellesley College, for her work with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, founded in 1915.

11. 1950 Ralph J. Bunche, the first African-American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, for his work on the armistice that ended the Arab-Israeli War in 1949.

12. 1953 George C. Marshall, secretary of state and defense secretary under President Truman, for his role in rebuilding Europe after World War II.

13. 1962 Linus C. Pauling, a chemist, for his campaign against nuclear testing and the spread of nuclear weapons, as well as his work "against all warfare as a means of solving international conflicts."

14. 1964 The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "for being the first person in the Western world to have shown us that a struggle can be waged without violence."

15. 1970 Norman E. Borlaug, an agricultural scientist, for developing high-yield grains and helping to "provide bread for a hungry world."

16. 1973 Henry Kissinger, shared with Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam, for negotiating the pullout of American troops in return for a cease-fire. Mr. Tho declined the prize.

17. 1986 Elie Wiesel, an author and Holocaust survivor, for being a "spokesman for the view of mankind and for the unlimited humanitarianism which are at all times necessary for a lasting and just peace."

18. 1997 Jody Williams, shared with her group International Campaign to Ban Landmines, "for their work for the banning and clearing of anti-personnel mines."

19. 2002 Former President Jimmy Carter, for his efforts "to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."

20. 2007 Former Vice President Al Gore, shared the prize with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change."

21. 2009 - October 9 [And of course - the most recent]  President Barack Obama, "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," and his "vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons".