US schoolgirl Samantha Smith, who became a symbol of public diplomacy in the Cold War, was born on June 29, 1972
Samantha Smith, the famed pupil-peace activist from the US, would have celebrated her 45th birthday today. In the early 1980s, this 10-year-old American schoolgirl soared to fame by becoming a symbol of public diplomacy during the Cold War. In 1982, she wrote a letter to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov asking him if the USSR really wanted to conquer the United States. Andropov invited the girl and her family to the Soviet Union. She visited the USSR in 1983 as a Goodwill Ambassador and went to see Moscow, Leningrad and the Artek summer camp. In 1985, at the age of 13, Samantha Smith was killed in a plane crash in the US.