{"id":3486,"date":"2011-01-03T06:00:40","date_gmt":"2011-01-03T14:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=3486"},"modified":"2013-10-03T02:29:11","modified_gmt":"2013-10-03T09:29:11","slug":"alfred-nobel-was-also-known-as-the-merchant-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2011\/01\/alfred-nobel-was-also-known-as-the-merchant-of-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Alfred Nobel Was Also Known as “The Merchant of Death”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today I found out<\/a> Alfred Nobel, who left most of his fortune to start the Nobel Prizes, was once nicknamed “The Merchant of Death”.<\/p>\n

The \u201cmerchant of death\u201d title was given to him due to Nobel inventing, and making most of his vast fortune off of, dynamite and other types of explosives, such as \u201cballistite\u201d, which was the precursor to quite a lot of military grade explosive devices.<\/p>\n

Nobel came up with the idea of using his money for these annual prizes after his brother, Ludvig, died in 1888 and a French newspaper mistakenly thought it had been Alfred Nobel himself who died.\u00a0 The newspaper published the obituary under the title: \u201cThe Merchant of Death is Dead\u201d, going on to state: \u201cDr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Nobel read this, he began thinking of how to improve his public image after his death and decided on leaving his enormous fortune to fund a set of prizes named after himself. The Nobel Prizes were created as awards for people who made the greatest contributions to mankind in subjects that interested Nobel, namely Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace.<\/p>\n

Nobel did a lot of his own work in Physics and Chemistry and was an enthusiast of various literature of the day.\u00a0 He also saw the benefit to advancements in medicine. The \u201cpeace\u201d prize was thought to have been suggested and promoted by his former lover and secretary Bertha Kinsky, who later won the award in 1905, just a few years after the Nobel Prizes were established.\u00a0 This is thought to have appealed to him because of his reputation as a war monger, and a huge point to the Nobel Prizes, as stated, was to fix his reputation as a \u201cmerchant of death\u201d.<\/p>\n

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