June 9

Bertha Felicitas Sophie Freifrau von Suttner was born on the 9th in 1843 in Prague, then part of the Austrian Empire. For a brief time in 1896, she worked for Alfred Nobel. She had responded to an advertisement seeking a secretary-housekeeper for his home in Paris. Her employment with him was brief but the two maintained a life-long friendship and correspondence. Bertha was a successful novelist as well as a radical pacifist. It was her largely her relationship with Nobel that convinced him to include a Nobel Peace Prize in his yearly awards. In 1905, she would become the first recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize .

Holger Madsen and Carl Theodor Dreyer made a movie about her life, Die Waffen niede, in 1914. She is currently depicted on the Austrian 2 euro coin.
Bertha only worked for Alfred for one week and then left to secretly marry Arthur Gundaccar Freiherr von Suttne, a man whom her family had forbidden her to marry. I guess that showed her parents who’s boss, huh?