Fifty delegations, representing peoples from every inhabited continent, gathered in San Francisco's Herbst Theatre on June 26, 1945, and signed a document they hoped would end war as an instrument of state policy. The United Nations Charter created a permanent international body with teeth: a Security Council empowered to authorize collective military action, a General Assembly where every member nation held a voice, and an International Court of Justice to arbitrate disputes. Architects of the new order included Jan Smuts of South Africa, who drafted pivotal preamble language, and foreign ministers from China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France, each signing for the great powers whose unanimity the Charter required. Ratification followed on October 24, now observed as UN Day, when the first General Assembly convened in London. Eight decades later, every international negotiation from climate accords to ceasefire resolutions still flows through the framework those fifty pens set in motion.