A bronze statue outside the Maine State Museum honors Samantha Smith, the Maine schoolgirl who wrote to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov in 1982 asking why the Soviet Union wanted war. Her letter led to an invitation to visit the USSR, turning her into an unlikely child peace ambassador before her death in a 1985 plane crash. The sculpture shows Samantha releasing a dove while a bear cub sits beside her.
Filed under weird history: real events too strange to have made the textbook.
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Source: Roadside America