The Nobel Peace Prize has gone to some less-than-deserving recipients over the years (understatement). But in honour of St Patrick's Day, here's some homework for you on two recipients who did, in fact, deserve the prize.

https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/laureates/1998

You can read the entirety of the Good Friday Agreement online. For such an incredibly important document, it isn't that long.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-belfast-agreement

1998 - Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel Peace Prize

The Good Friday Agreement only came about through a heroic effort by so many people. A tremendous amount of forgiveness and forbearance was needed on both sides to even sit in the same room as each other after all that had been done to their people. But there they sat, eventually, and they talked, and they agreed.

Peace once seemed to be impossible in Northern Ireland. It wasn't. We've been at peace for 28 years now.

It wasn't easy. But it reminds you of what can be possible.

And on a personal note, it was because of the GFA that my dad could, after thirty years, finally come home. That's why I'm here now, and why I too can call this place my home.
@astronomerritt I'm a bit embarrassed that I didn't realize *just* how modern that peace is. Like, I knew conceptually that the Troubles existed. I didn't learn until well after how truly violent they were. I especially didn't realize that peace was made while I was in college.

@astronomerritt fucking hell, I'm doing a quick read to educate myself a bit and have already stumbled across U2 song titles that I didn't know were historical events.

If anybody was wondering why America is the way it is, it's because our schooling is dogshit.

@dave @astronomerritt and money poured in to the IRA from the US. I'm not taking sides, but Irish Americans partially bankrolled an extremely violent resistance movement.
@edgeofeurope @dave I assume you mean the IRA here and not the Royal Air Force.
@astronomerritt @dave oh fuck yes, sorry. I was somehow thjnking of the German terrorist group RAF
@edgeofeurope See, I didn't know there was a German terrorist group called the RAF, so now I've learned something!