History
The idea of the Order of the Smile was established in 1968 by the Polish magazine Kurier Polski, inspired by Wanda Chotomska. In 1979 (announced by the International Year of the Child) the then-Secretary-General of the United Nations Kurt Waldheim officially recognized the Order. From then, the Order of the Smile became an international order.
In 1996, in Rabka, the Order of the Smile Museum was established on the grounds of the family park known as "Rabkoland." After the region had been given the official status of the "City of Children from around the World," an initiative was put forward to open a permanent Polish Santa's Village, which would accept letters addressed to Santa Claus from children across Poland.
In 2003 an International Charter of the Order of the Smile session took place outside the Warsaw headquarters in Świdnica, where the Child Friendship Center was being erected. Świdnica had been officially titled the "Capital of Children's Dreams," and September 21, 2003, was declared Order of the Smile Children's Day.
Read more about this topic: Order Of The Smile
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification of the spirit.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)