1858 – Selma Lagerlöf (20 November 1858 – 16 March 1940), Swedish author, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1909, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf was born in Värmland in western Sweden, An early sickness left her lame in both legs, although she later recovered. Lagerlöf was educated at the Högre lärarinneseminariet in Stockholm from 1882 to 1885. She worked as a country schoolteacher at a high school for girls in Landskrona from 1885 to 1895 and began her first novel. In 1894 she met Swedish-Jewish Sophie Elkan, also a writer, who became her friend and companion. A 1900 visit to the American Colony in Jerusalem became the inspiration for Lagerlöf’s book by that name. She traveled to Italy, and she also traveled to Palestine and other parts of the East. In Italy, a legend of a Christ Child figure that had been replaced with a false version inspired Lagerlöf’s novel (The Miracles of the Antichrist). Set in Sicily, the novel explores the interplay between Christian and socialist moral systems. In 1909 Selma Lagerlöf won the Nobel Prize. Selma Lagerlöf was herself active as a speaker for the Country Association for Women’s Suffrage, which was beneficial for the organisation because of the great respect which surrounded Lagerlöf, and she spoke at the International Suffrage Congress in Stockholm in June 1911, where she gave the opening address, as well as at the victory party of the Swedish suffrage movement after women suffrage had been granted in May 1919. At the start of World War II, she sent her Nobel Prize medal and gold medal from the Swedish Academy to the government of Finland to help raise money to fight the Soviet Union. Selma Lagerlöf was a friend of the German-Jewish writer Nelly Sachs. Shortly before her death in 1940, Lagerlöf intervened with the Swedish royal family to secure the release of Sachs and Sachs’ aged mother from Nazi Germany, on the very last flight from Germany to Sweden, and their lifelong asylum in Stockholm.
1923 – Nadine Gordimer (20 November 1923 – 13 July 2014), South African author and activist, Nobel Prize laureate.
Gordimer was born near Gauteng, an East Rand mining town outside Johannesburg. She began writing at an early age, and published her first stories in 1937 at the age of 15. Her first published work was a short story for children. At the age of 16, she had her first adult fiction published. In 1951, the New Yorker accepted Gordimer’s story “A Watcher of the Dead” beginning a long relationship, and bringing Gordimer’s work to a much larger public. Gordimer’s first novel, The Lying Days, was published in 1953. The arrest of her best friend, Bettie du Toit, in 1960 and the Sharpeville massacre spurred Gordimer’s entry into the anti-apartheid movement. When Mandela was released from prison in 1990, she was one of the first people he wanted to see. Literary recognition for her accomplishments culminated with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. In the post-apartheid 1990s and 21st century, Gordimer was active in the HIV/AIDS movement, addressing a significant public health crisis in South Africa. Gordimer died in her sleep on 13 July 2014 at the age of 90.
1946-Children’s Day is recognized in many places around the world, on various days to honor children.
Universal Children’s Day takes place annually on November 20. First proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1954, it was established to encourage all countries to institute a day, firstly to promote mutual exchange and understanding among children and secondly to initiate action to benefit and promote the welfare of the world’s children. The United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child on November 20, 1989. Universal Children’s Day is not simply a day to celebrate children for who they are, but to bring awareness to children around the globe that have succumbed to violence in forms of abuse, exploitation and discrimination. Children are used as labourers in some countries, immersed in armed conflict, living on the streets, suffering from religious discrimination, minority issues, or disabilities.
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Iranian children need global attention since they suffer from various problems under the clerical dictatorship treets |
And some have to work hard and do not go to school |
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Some of them like Narges Mohamadi’s children have to see their mother on hunger strike and imprisoned under the torture | Some do not have any home and live in the streets. |