FACTBOX-Some facts about the Nobel Peace Prize

(Reuters) - Following are some facts about the Nobel Peace Prize, the winner of which will be announced on October 10:

* The 2008 prize winner will be selected from a near record 197 nominees, 16 more than last year and just short of the record of 199 set in 2005.

* The 2007 prize was won by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for raising awareness of the risks of climate change.

* Mother Teresa refused to attend a traditional Nobel banquet in Oslo when she came to collect her prize in 1979, saying that the money would be better spent on the poor. The banquet was cancelled.

* The International Committee of the Red Cross is the most successful winner with prizes in 1917, 1944 and 1963. And Red Cross founder Henri Dunant of Switzerland shared the first award in 1901.

* Protesters threw snowballs at the U.S. ambassador to Oslo when he came to collect the 1973 prize on behalf of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for brokering a failed peace deal to end the Vietnam war. North Vietnamese leader Le Duc Tho turned down the joint award, the most controversial in the prize's history.

* Past nominees have included Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

* Hitler banned Germans from accepting Nobel Prizes in disgust after the 1935 award went to pacifist anti-Nazi writer Carl von Ossietzky. The ruling affected three German scientists awarded prizes for chemistry and medicine in the late 1930s.

* The 2006 peace prize was won by Bangladeshi economist Mohammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded for their work to help millions out of poverty by granting tiny loans, pioneering a global movement known as microcredit.