Malala, a child education activist, is born

July 12 1997 — Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, is born in Mingora. She tells her story on the Malala Fund website: “Welcoming a baby girl is not always cause for celebration in Pakistan — but my father, Ziauddin Yousafzai [who ran a girls’ school in the town], was determined to give me every opportunity a boy would have. I loved school. But everything changed when the Taliban took control of our town in Swat Valley. The extremists banned many things ... And they said girls could no longer go to school.” They destroy countless girls’ schools. Inspired by Pakistan founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Malala starts speaking about education rights in September 2008 when her father takes her to speak at the Peshawar press club. Her continued campaign on behalf of girls’ right to learn makes her a target. On October 9 2012, on her way home from school, a masked gunman boards her school bus, asks, “Who is Malala?” and shoots her “on the left side of my head. I woke up 10 days later in a hospital in Birmingham, England. The doctors and nurses told me about the attack — and that people around the world were praying for my recovery.” The world rallies behind her and her cause. She celebrates her 16th birthday on the world stage at the UN, sets up the Malala Fund with her father in 2014 and receives the Nobel Peace Prize, with Indian children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi, in December 2014.