It's the birthday of Wislawa Szymborska , born in Poland (1923). When she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996, few people outside of Poland had ever heard of her. Her early poems dealt with the horrors of World War II and the Stalin era. Her later poems are more personal, and her work is famous for its gentle humor.

When she accepted the Nobel Prize, she said, "They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway."