On October 9, 2009, something historic happened.
President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
He was not a front-runner, in fact, people were surprised that he had won, yesterday, the front-runner, they said, was Colombian senator Piedad Cordoba, who's most famous act was to find and free 16 prisoners.
All applications had to be sent in only 12 days after he had taken office, and there was already talk about who it was going to be 2 months before he was even elected.
The committee said, just after they had announced that it would go to Obama, "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given it's hope for a better future".
According to Thorbjorn Jagland, the leader of the committee, the decision to give Obama the prize was "Unanimous" and that it came with ease to pick the President.
During Obama's speech, he said that he didn't deserve to "be in the company" of all the other winners of the prize, but that he would accept it, because he did think that he was trying to do a lot of things, like his attempt to find a resolution to Nuclear Weapons, the Global Economic Downturn, and finding the resolution to the Arab-Isreali conflict.
He also mentioned that he, as the President of the United States, was responsible with ending the useless Iraq war to premote a higher level of peace, and that he will donate about 1.4 million to charity and charitable causes.
As well as Barack Obama, other winners of the Nobel Prizes include Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W. Szostack for Medicine and Physiology, Herta Müller for Literature, and many others.
A special thanks to cnn.com and other various sources for additional information
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