Celebrities

Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala turns 20 today

Picture:
Picture:
Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Malala Yousafzai is the youngest ever Nobel Prize laureate, and a Pakistani activist for female education.

She began blogging for the BBC in early 2009 under the name Gul Makai, on the subject of the right to education under the Taliban.

In 2012, Yousafzai was injured after a Taliban gunman attempted to murder her for her activism - speaking up for the right of girls to be educated.

She was treated for her injuries at a hospital in Birmingham in the UK, where she subsequently attended school. Only two years later she received the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work against the suppression of children both inside and outside the classroom.

indy100 reported earlier this year that she is holding an offer for Lady Margaret Hall college at Oxford University, and since finishing her exams the young activist has joined Twitter.

It's no surprise that she's gained over 700,000 followers in less than a week.

It's also her birthday today, she's turning 20.

20.

Imagine what you had accomplished by the age of 20, and it's safe to say she's probably got you beat.

Here's some other depressingly talented and brilliant 20-year-olds throughout history.

  • Bill Gates had dropped out of Harvard and founded Microsoft.
  • Mary Shelley had written Frankenstein.
  • Jane Austen wrote her second novel Pride and Prejudice.
  • Plato became a disciple of Socrates.
  • Isaac Newton had developed calculus.
  • Albert Einstein had written a thought experiment essay, that contained the beginnings of the special theory of relativity.
  • Bobby Fischer had dropped out of high school and become an international grandmaster.
  • Leon Trotsky had beomce a revolutionary.
  • Pablo Picasso had already expanded his style of post-impressionism, was starting his blue period and would go on to join the pioneers of Cubism.

Anyway, enough of that.

Happy Birthday Malala.

Her fund works to champion every girl's right to safe and decent education, prioritising countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, Lebanon and Jordan.

You can read more and donate on the fund's website.

More: Malala is going to Oxford and some people are outraged

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