"14 POINTS LAID FOUNDATION FOR PEACE"

PRESIDENT WILSON WINS NOBEL PRIZE 

Oslo, Norway (JFK+50) On December 10, 1920, President Woodrow Wilson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  The President's Fourteen Points* proposal for peace after World War I influenced the final decision of the Nobel Committee.

The Nobel Prize website says that because the United States Senate refused to approve membership in the League of Nations and the President was disappointed with peace negotiations in Paris, there was some opposition on the Committee to Wilson getting the award.  In the end, a majority approved.

According to history.com, Wilson's Fourteen Points...

"laid the foundation for the peace...at the end of World War I (and) formed the basis of American foreign policy in the 20th and early 21st centuries."

*Fourteen Points were introduced by WW in his speech to Congress on Jan 8 1918.  They included freedom of the seas, free trade & self-determination.  The 14th point called for a "general association of nations (to offer) mutual guarantees of political independence...to great & small nations alike."

SOURCES

"The Fourteen Points:  Woodrow Wilson and the U.S. Rejection of the Treaty of Versailles," The National World War Museum and Memorial, www.theworldwar.org/

"Woodrow Wilson awarded Nobel Peace Prize," December 10, 1920, This Day In History, www.history.com/

"Woodrow Wilson Facts," Nobel Prize, www.nobelprize.org/

 

 

 

Kaiser Wilhelm Considers

Wilson's 14 Points

by E.A. Bushnell (1918)

Ohio State University

Cartoon Research Library

FAITH IN NEW POSSIBILITIES & COURAGE TO ADVOCATE THEM

JFK+50:  Volume 7, No. 2155

JANE ADDAMS: FIRST AMERICAN WOMAN TO WIN NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

Chicago, Illinois (JFK+50) Eighty-five years ago today, December 10, 1931, Jane Addams* became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.  Miss Adams was president of the Women's International League For Peace and Freedom.  She was the second woman to win the Nobel Prize, the first was Marie Curie in 1903.

The Nobel Prize website says that Jane Addams "worked for many years to get the great powers to disarm and conclude peace agreements."  She also worked to help the poor and in 1889 co-founded Hull House here in Chicago. 

As National Chairman of the Woman's Peace Party, Miss Addams spoke out strongly against U.S. entry into World War I.

One of Jane Addams' memorable quotes is...

"What after all has maintained the human race (is) faith in new possibilities and courage to advocate them."

*Jane Addams (1860-1935) was born in Cedarville, IL & educated at Rockford Female Seminary.  She is best known as co-founder of a settlement house for immigrants located in Chicago, Il. called Hull House. 

SOURCE

"Jane Addams-Facts," The Official Site of the Nobel Prize, www.nobelprize.org/

"Nobel Prize Awarded Women," The Official Site of the Nobel Prize, www.nobelprize.org/

Jane Addams

Bain News Service (1920s)

Library of Congress Photo

WHEN THOMAS JEFFERSON DINED ALONE

JFK+50:  Volume 5, No. 1934

JFK WELCOMES EXTRAORDINARY COLLECTION OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) Fifty four years ago this evening, April 29, 1962, President John F. Kennedy was host at a state dinner for winners of the Nobel Prize of the Western Hemisphere. The dinner was held in the elegant State Dining Room at the White House.

The President began his remarks with these words...

"I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House.  I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

According to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, President Kennedy described the Nobel Prize winners from the United States as "a source of national pride," but added that knowledge should not be bound by nationality.

JFK said...

"More Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded to citizens of the United States than any other nation (13 total)...."

President Kennedy included this quotation from Benjamin Franklin...

"The rapid progress true science now makes occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon.  It is impossible to imagine the height to which may be carried in a thousand years the power of man over matter."

State Dining Room

The White House

FIRST NOBEL PRIZES AWARDED

December 10, 2013

FIRST NOBEL PRIZES AWARDED 

Stockholm, Sweden (JFK+50) 112 years ago today, December 10, 1901,  the first Nobel Prizes were awarded.

The prizes are funded from the estate of the Swedish chemist and inventor, Alfred B. Nobel.*

*Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833-1896) was born in Stockholm and was educated in St. Petersburg, Russia and studied engineering in the U.S.

Nobel was the inventor of dynamite and as such became one of the world's wealthiest men.  Never in good health, he felt guilty that so many died as a result of his invention.

Nobel Prizes are awarded annually in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine, literature, international peace and economics.

The Royal Academy of Science awards the prizes for physics and chemistry while The Caroline Institute gives the award for medicine. 

The Swedish Academy of Literature awards the prize of literature and the international peace prize is given in Oslo, Norway.

The countries represented with the highest number of Nobel Prizes include the United States, Germany, Great Britain, France, Sweden Switzerland, Italy, and The Netherlands.

The first round of Nobel Prizes were awarded as follows:

Physics

Wilhelm K. Roentgen, x rays

Chemistry

Jacobus Henricus Van't Hoff, thermodynamics 

Medicine

Emit von Behring, diptheria antitoxin

Literature

Rene Sully-Prudhomme, poetry

Peace:  Jean Henri Dunant, Red Cross 
               Frederic Passy, Peace Society


Americans who were recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize include...

Theodore Roosevelt
Elihu Root 
Woodrow Wilson
Frank Kellogg
Jane Addams
Nicholas M. Butler
Cordell Hull
John R. Mott
Emily G. Balch
Ralph J. Bunche
George C. Marshall
Linus Pauling
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Norman Borlaug
Henry Kissinger
Elie Wiesel
Albert Gore, Jr.
Jimmy Carter
Barack Obama

The most recent recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize was Liu Xiaobo who won the award "for his long and non-violent struggles for fundamental human rights in China."

President John F. Kennedy addressed Nobel Prize winners at a dinner at the White House on April 29, 1962.

The President said:

"I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

Thomas Jefferson

JFK added...

"Someone once said that Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman of 32 who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, and dance the minuet. 

Whatever he may have lacked, if we could have had his former colleague, Mr. Franklin, here we all would have been impressed." 

Benjamin Franklin

SOURCE

The World Book Encyclopedia, Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, Chicago, 1967.