I found some interesting tidbits about the man behind the Nobel Peace prize. Y’all might already know this, but if you didn’t…
Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor of dynamite, blasting caps, smokeless gunpowder,and many other explosion-related items, suffered from mistaken identity. On April 13, 1888, Nobel awoke in Paris, opened a newspaper,and was astonished to read his own obituary. but it was actually his brother Ludwig who’d died; the newspaper had goofed.
As a result of the mistake, Nobel was given the rare gift of a chance to see how he would be remembered…and he didn’t like what he saw. As David Zacks writes in An Underground Education:
Alfred was shocked to see himself portrayed as the Merchant of Death, the man responsible for escalating the arms race…[even though] he had made high-powered explosives much easier to use and was proud of how this power had been unleashed to mine precious minerals and to build roads, railways, and canals.
The obituary painted him as a “bellicose monster” whose discoveries “had boosted the bloody art of war from bullets and bayonets to long-range explosives in less than 24 years.”
Determined to change his image and redeem the family name, Nobel hatched a shrewd plan. He used his wealth to create prizes in several areas – including peace. (Sort of like “the Exxon award for environmental safety…[or] the John F. Kennedy award for marital fidelity,” Zack says). It was successful spin control. Today, the Nobel Prizes are the most prestigious in the world…and few of us connect their creator the “the art of killing.”
Uncle John’s Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom Reader
August 29, 2006 at 12:08 am
The Dick Cheney award for marksmanship.
The Maury Povich award for subtlety.
The Linda Tripp friendship award.
The Star Jones class act award.
The Barbara Walters elocution award.
This is fun!
September 1, 2006 at 9:57 am
MamaHockett!!!!!!!!! I’m coming home today!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!
September 1, 2006 at 9:49 pm
Hi Holly,
I went to the young man’s (doctorsoccr1006)blog. And wow! did say nice thngs about you. How wonderful to be respected so much by your children’s friends.
September 2, 2006 at 1:18 pm
This is interesting. I had never learned this. Thanks for teaching me something new today. Have a great weekend.
Carol
September 5, 2006 at 12:39 pm
Helen, thank you for the kind comment. When I was coming up, my friends wanted to hang out at my house because they liked my mama so much, so I always wanted to be that mama.
September 5, 2006 at 3:41 pm
I suppose it’s kind of like the gatling gun (am I spelling that right?) which was invented by Dr. Gatling in an attempt to make wars shorter, thus more humane. Not the way it worked out, huh?
September 5, 2006 at 8:05 pm
Just a note about In a Pickle. It’s a word game,… we played it in the “it has to tell a story” sort of way. Some of the stories were way out there,… but funny. I’m not sure if we followed the rules exactly, but the game definitely grows on you as you play it longer. Since you mentioned that you’d checked it out, I thought I should share a bit more about the game:)
I think one of our most popular stories involved cholesterol, which was in a bee, which was swallowed by a giraffe, who had fallen in a canyon, which was in the middle of New York, and all of this was in a joke. Hmm,… maybe you had to be really sleep deprived amongst weird friends to enjoy that humor,… but we couldn’t stop laughing.