She wrote an urgent letter at age 10 to then Soviet Union leader, Yuri Andropov, that made headlines in the 1980s. Her message remains relevant on what would have been her 50th birthday.
Mention "young activist," and chances are latter-day heroes like Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg spring to mind.
Pakistani Yousafzai survived being shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 for fighting for girls' right to education. Thunberg's weekly protests for climate change action, that began in her native Sweden in 2018, helped birth the global youth-led- Fridays for Future movement. Both were 15 when they started fighting their causes.
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Back in the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War between the US and the former USSR, a 10-year-old American girl also made headlines.
Her advocacy for peace and the prevention of nuclear war remains pertinent 40 years on, as veiled threats of nuclear attack are made during the current war waged by Russia in Ukraine.
Her name was Samantha Reed Smith.
'Nobody would ever want to have another war'
Born on June 29, 1972 in Houlton, Maine, Smith was only 5 when she wrote to Queen Elizabeth II expressing her admiration.
When she was 10, the news then focused most on the Cold War and nuclear arms race that was escalating between her country led by President Ronald Reagan and Russia.
"There was always something on television about missiles and nuclear bombs," she once wrote. She described seeing a scientist who said "that a nuclear war would wreck the Earth and destroy the atmosphere. Nobody would win a nuclear war."
Then her mother showed her a copy of Time magazine dated November 22, 1982 that featured new Russian leader, Yuri Andropov. In the cover story she read with her mother, it was clear that the Soviets and the US both feared the other would start a nuclear war.