axbom’s Twitter Archive—№ 35,522

1. In 1888, Ludvig Nobel died. Reportedly, some newspapers mistakenly reported that his brother, Alfred Nobel, had died. One French newspaper stated "The merchant of death is dead" due to his invention of military explosives (not dynamite, which mainly had civilian applications).
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2. The article went further: "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday." Alfred Nobel, alive and well in Paris, was upset by the idea that this was how he would be remembered. He pledged to change his ways.
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3. A few years later he signed most of his wealth off to a trust. This was unbeknownst to his family. 94 percent of his total assets were allocated to establish the five Nobel prizes. This is in part due to wanting to leave a better legacy.
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4. In France however he was accused of high treason against the state for selling the explosive Ballistite to Italy. So he had moved from Paris to Sanremo, Italy in 1891 - where he died on December 10, 1896.
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5. Alfred's younger brother Emil died in 1864 when a shed used for preparation of nitroglycerin exploded at the family factory. He was 21. Alfred invented dynamite, much safer to handle than nitroglycerin, three years later.
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6. And the remaining of four brothers, the only 4 siblings of 8 to survive beyond childhood, died in August of the same year as Alfred. Robert Nobel for several years ran the company Branobel together with his two brothers, with Ludvig taking the reins when Robert fell ill.
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7. Branobel, a petroleum production company, at one point produced 50% of the world's oil. Ludvig Nobel, credited with creating the Russian oil industry, actually built the largest fortune of any of the Nobel brothers and was one of the world's richest men.
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8. As much an inventor as Alfred, Ludvig designed the world’s first oil tanker and installed Europe’s first oil pipelines. He started out building diesel engines, then produced munitions and rifles and later discovered oil near the Caspian Sea.
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9. Much later, following the Bolshevik revolution in 2017, it is estimated that 99% of the Nobel family's vast fortune in Russia was confiscated. And Soviet historians virtually erased Ludvig Nobel from the record.
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10. Anyway, Alfred's fortune turned into the Nobel Prize seemingly in part to save face after seeing his own, mistakenly-published, devastating obituary after Ludvig's death. Whether or not that saved his reputation will be left to the eye of the beholder. And time.
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11. The story of this premature obituary is published in many forms in respected magazines and journals, but when asking the Nobel foundation directly this answer was provided to Peter McNaughton: history.stackexchange.com/questions/43461/is-there-any-record-of-the-premature-obituary-of-alfred-nobel
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12. “Dear Peter Macnaughton, There have never been found any documentation about this story despite all the research conducted. Yours sincerely, Nobelprize.org Team” In the end, it is up to every reader to decide what trust they place in this saga. 😊
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13. Takeaway: if you sprinkle an unconfirmed story with lots of interesting facts, it can start looking more and more like all those facts. Especially if it contains a stark twist. But underneath… it is still just an unconfirmed story.
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…in reply to @axbom
14. In the Apple app store the story is presented as an undisputable fact.
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