Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 1964

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. developed a disciplined philosophy of nonviolence

Dr. King defined nonviolence as a discipline: resistance to injustice, love over hate, redemptive suffering, and faith in justice—drawing moral guidance from the Christian Gospel and strategic methods from Mahatma Gandhi.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shifted his focus toward economic justice in his final years

In the late 1960s, Dr. King increasingly emphasized economic inequality, labor rights, and poverty, culminating in the Poor People’s Campaign, which argued that civil rights gains were incomplete without financial security.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. publicly denounced the Vietnam War in 1967

In a 1967 speech, Dr. King comprehensively condemned the US war in Vietnam, linking militarism, racism, and poverty—a break that cost him allies and drew backlash from political leaders and major media outlets.

Creating Martin Luther King Jr. Day took 15 years of political advocacy

After Dr. King’s assassination, activists—including his wife Coretta Scott King—spent 15 years pushing Congress to create a federal holiday in his honor, facing repeated resistance before it was finally signed into law in 1983.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. survived a near-fatal assassination attempt in 1958

In 1958, Dr. King was stabbed in the chest by a woman at a Harlem book signing. The blade lodged near his aorta, requiring emergency surgery to save his life.

The Nobel Peace Prize is sometimes awarded to inspire ideals, not honor achievements

Critics argue this approach has led to regrettable choices, such as honoring Yasser Arafat despite his militant past or Barack Obama before he established a peace legacy. Committee member Kåre Kristiansen resigned in protest after Arafat was named a laureate in 1994.

Listen to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. read his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail

Written in 1963 while jailed for nonviolent protest, Dr. King’s letter defends civil disobedience, rejects calls for patience, and argues that unjust laws must be confronted to expose injustice and force meaningful change.

Despite the rules, a Nobel Prize in medicine has been awarded posthumously

Ralph Steinman, whose work revealed how dendritic cells activate immune responses, passed away just days before being named a Nobel laureate. Although Nobel Prizes cannot be awarded posthumously, the committee made an exception because they believed he was alive at the time of the decision.

King was awarded the National Medal of the Arts in 2014

For decades, Stephen King has been a pop-culture titan, though he was often pegged as unserious and formulaic by the more high-minded literary establishment. That began to change in the 1990s, with critical reconsiderations of his work. It was fully cemented in 2014, when he received the National Medal of Arts.

Camus won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1957 for his philosophical essays and fiction

The philosopher and novelist was one of the youngest writers to win the award, at just 44. In his acceptance speech, he spoke on the role of an artist in a world that seemed increasingly bleak. "Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world," he said. "Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself."

The youngest Oscar winners in history

The awards often go to veterans who have paid their dues, but sometimes the bright young stars manage to break through. That was the case with these 14 Oscar winners (like Adrien Brody, Prince, and Markéta Irglová) who earned accolades despite their relatively green status.

Magnus Carlsen became world champion at just 22 years old

Norwegian prodigy Magnus Carlsen won the World Chess Championship in 2013 at age 22, one of the youngest champions in history. He went on to dominate for a decade, peaking at an Elo rating (a modern measure of chess ability) of 2882—the highest ever recorded.

Explore a list of Nobel Prize winners supported by National Science Foundation grants

As of 2025, 274 Nobel laureates have received funding from the NSF at some point during their careers, including 49 in physiology or medicine, 82 in physics, and 70 in chemistry. The 73 NSF-funded laureates in economics include every prize winner since 1997.

In 2016, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for his lyrics

Rock legend Bob Dylan’s 2016 Nobel Prize was a surprise in the literary world. A rock lyricist had never been awarded the distinction. Dylan explains his affection for literary giants like Herman Melville and Homer, connecting his writing, and the rock ‘n’ roll of his youth, to the literary tradition.

The 2018 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for creating tweezers out of light

At 96, Arthur Ashkin became the oldest person to win a Nobel Prize in Physics for demonstrating how lasers can hold and measure objects, a technique that has since been used to explore microbiological environments. The award was also given to Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland for developing a method of creating optical pulses.

Nelson Mandela delivered his famous anti-apartheid speech in court in 1964

During the Rivonia Trial, Mandela was charged along with several others for opposing South Africa's apartheid government, and expected to be sentenced to death. He showed up to court wearing traditional Xhosa attire and delivered an hours-long address against racial domination. Nelson said he hoped to live to see realized his ideal of a democratic and free society, but announced that he was prepared to die for his cause.

'Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.'

- Senator Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968)

Kendrick Lamar's "DAMN." was the first hip-hop album to win a Pulitzer

Kendrick Lamar’s 2017 Pulitzer win for his album "DAMN." made history as the first hip-hop artist ever to receive the award. The Pulitzer Prize for Music is usually awarded to classical and jazz compositions, making Lamar's win even more unexpected.

Three AI startup founders broke the record for the youngest self-made billionaire previously set by Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest self-made billionaire in 2006 at 23 years old when Facebook held its initial public offering. In January of 2026, three AI startup founders—Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha—broke Zuckerberg's record and became billionaires at 22 years old.

A 21-year-old college student designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

In 1981, a 21-year-old Yale architecture student, Maya Lin, won the national design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The design was controversial for rejecting heroic statues, using a black wall, and avoiding overt patriotic symbolism.

Robert Koch won the Nobel for his tuberculosis work, but he also pioneered cholera research

Koch was one of the first scientists to isolate the bacterium that causes cholera while investigating an outbreak in Egypt in 1883. He went on to advise about rules to control cholera outbreaks, which formed the basis of the disease control approaches and water hygiene techniques still used today.

President Harry Truman appointed Roosevelt as one of the first US delegates to the United Nations

After FDR's death in 1945, Roosevelt joined the delegation to the newly established United Nations. She was the only woman among the General Assembly delegates and was unanimously elected to chair the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Greta Thunberg addressed Davos at 16 years old

In 2019, 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg took the Davos stage to sharply criticize global leaders for failing to act on climate change, warning that incremental promises were meaningless without immediate, systemic action.

'The Negro Speaks of Rivers’ introduced a teenage Hughes to the literary world

While traveling to Mexico to visit his father, Hughes began scrawling “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” as he crossed the Mississippi River, using the river as a metaphor for the Black experience. The poem was published in 1921 in the Crisis, an NAACP magazine edited by WEB DuBois, kickstarting Hughes’ literary career.

Lyndon Johnson moved the State of the Union into prime time

In January 1965, President Johnson moved the address to prime time to reach a larger TV audience, using it to promote his "Great Society" program—a push to reduce poverty, advance civil rights, and expand federal action in healthcare and economic opportunity.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

An Ebola vaccine was developed during the 2018 west African Ebola outbreak, but the 2026 Ebola outbreak is with a different species of the virus, not the one that the vaccine is approved to treat.

'Silent' fireworks have gained more interest in recent years as a quieter celebratory option.

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.