{"id":117896,"date":"2026-10-04T09:06:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T13:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=117896"},"modified":"2026-10-04T09:06:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T13:06:24","slug":"alfred-nobel-merchant-of-death-obituary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bgodinspired-news\/alfred-nobel-merchant-of-death-obituary\/","title":{"rendered":"Alfred Nobel and the &#8220;Merchant of Death&#8221; Obituary: What the Newspaper Really Said"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='booster-block booster-read-block'>\n                <div class=\"twp-read-time\">\n                \t<i class=\"booster-icon twp-clock\"><\/i> <span>Read Time:<\/span>10 Minute, 12 Second                <\/div>\n\n            <\/div><p>Every October the same story comes back. Alfred Nobel, the man who invented dynamite, opens a newspaper one morning and reads that he is dead. The headline says: &#8220;The merchant of death is dead.&#8221; He is so shaken that he gives away his fortune and starts the Nobel Prizes.<\/p>\n\n<p>It is one of the best-known stories about any inventor. It will be told again this week, because the 2026 Nobel Prizes are announced from Monday 5 October to Monday 12 October.<\/p>\n\n<p>There is one problem. Nobody has ever found that headline.<\/p>\n\n<p>Something real did happen, though. It is smaller than the legend. In one way it is more interesting.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Alfred Nobel&#8217;s Obituary: What Really Happened in 1888<\/h2>\n\n<p>Alfred Nobel was Swedish. He patented dynamite in 1867 and built factories in many countries. By the 1880s he was very rich and living in Paris. He never married. Over his life he held 355 patents.<\/p>\n\n<p>He had an older brother, Ludvig, who had made his own fortune in oil. On 12 April 1888, Ludvig died in Cannes, in the south of France.<\/p>\n\n<p>A few days later the Paris newspaper Le Figaro printed a short notice. It had mixed up the two brothers. Translated from French, it said roughly this:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;A man who can hardly be called a benefactor of humanity died yesterday in Cannes. It is Mr. Nobel, inventor of dynamite.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>That was all. Two sentences.<\/p>\n\n<p>Alfred was 54 and very much alive. According to the news agency AFP, Le Figaro reported the next day that visitors who came to his Paris home to offer their condolences were surprised to be greeted by the man himself.<\/p>\n\n<p>So a newspaper really did report his death while he was still living. And it really did take a swipe at him. That part is true.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"6491fb8269\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/6491fb8269\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>Did a Newspaper Really Call Alfred Nobel the &#8220;Merchant of Death&#8221;?<\/h2>\n\n<p>Not that anyone can show.<\/p>\n\n<p>The famous line is usually given in French: &#8220;Le marchand de la mort est mort.&#8221; It has never been found in any newspaper from that time. Historians have not been able to confirm it, and some now call the story a myth.<\/p>\n\n<p>So where did it come from? One researcher who went looking, writing in a journal on the history of chemistry, traced the dramatic version to a biography of Nobel published in 1959. That is about seventy years after the event. Later books repeated it. After that it was everywhere.<\/p>\n\n<p>There is a second gap. Nobel&#8217;s biographer Ingrid Carlberg has told AFP that the mix-up is not mentioned in his letters. So we do not know how he felt about it. We can only imagine.<\/p>\n\n<p>Here is the honest picture, in three parts:<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>True:<\/strong> Le Figaro reported Alfred Nobel&#8217;s death by mistake in April 1888, and it was not kind about him.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Not found:<\/strong> any headline calling him &#8220;the merchant of death.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Unknown:<\/strong> whether the notice changed anything in him.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>This happens a lot with famous stories. They get tidier and louder each time they are told. The same thing happened with <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/bible-resources\/bible-and-science\/what-is-murphys-law\/\">the real story behind Murphy&#8217;s Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<h2>What Alfred Nobel&#8217;s Will Really Says<\/h2>\n\n<p>Seven years after the notice, on 27 November 1895, Nobel went to the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris and signed a new will. It was his third. Four people watched him sign it. Not one of them was a lawyer.<\/p>\n\n<p>He left about 94 percent of everything he owned to a fund. It came to a little over 31 million Swedish kronor, a huge fortune at the time. Each year the income was to be given out as prizes to the people who had brought &#8220;the greatest benefit to humankind.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>Now put the two pieces of paper side by side.<\/p>\n\n<p>The newspaper, 1888: a man who can hardly be called a <em>benefactor of humanity<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n<p>The will, 1895: prizes for <em>the greatest benefit to humankind<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n<p>It is almost the same phrase, turned the other way up. Many people have noticed that echo. It proves nothing. He may never have thought about the notice again. But the echo is in the real documents, and it is quieter and stranger than the headline nobody can find.<\/p>\n\n<p>There were other pushes too. For years Nobel wrote letters back and forth with Bertha von Suttner, a writer and peace campaigner who had worked for him for a short time in 1876. Historians think she probably shaped his idea for a peace prize. She won it herself in 1905.<\/p>\n\n<p>So if he changed, it was most likely slow. Years of letters and thinking. Not one bad morning.<\/p>\n\n<p>Alfred Nobel died on 10 December 1896 in San Remo, Italy. He was 63. When the will was read, there was uproar. Some of his relatives tried to have it thrown out, and the Nobel Foundation&#8217;s own history says they had the support of Sweden&#8217;s king at first. It took years to settle. The first prizes were given in 1901.<\/p>\n\n<p>One small note for this week. The economics prize, announced on 12 October, was not in Nobel&#8217;s will. Sweden&#8217;s central bank added it in 1968 in his memory.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Why the Alfred Nobel Story Will Not Go Away<\/h2>\n\n<p>Why do we keep telling the louder version?<\/p>\n\n<p>Maybe because it gives us something most of us will never get. A look at our own ending while there is still time to change it.<\/p>\n\n<p>Most people never see how a stranger would sum up their life. Nobel did. Whatever he felt, he saw it in print. And those two lines did not mention his 355 patents, or the tunnels and mines his invention helped to dig. They said one thing. Not much of a benefactor.<\/p>\n\n<p>There is a very old piece of wisdom, thousands of years old, that says a good name is worth more than fine perfume. Then, in the same breath, it says something odd. It says the day of death is better than the day of birth. It says it is better to go to a house where people are mourning than a house where people are feasting, because that is where every life ends up, and the living take it to heart.<\/p>\n\n<p>That sounds gloomy. It is not meant to be. On the day a child is born, nobody knows what the life will be. On the last day, you can finally see what it was. A party does not ask you anything. A funeral asks what you are doing with your days.<\/p>\n\n<p>Nobel got to stand in his own house of mourning eight years early.<\/p>\n\n<p>And here is a detail hiding in plain sight. The Nobel Prizes are handed out every year on 10 December. That is not his birthday. It is the day he died. His name is at its best on the day his life ended.<\/p>\n\n<p>Stories keep circling this question. One quiet novel opens with a forgotten teacher&#8217;s obituary and spends the rest of the book asking <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/entertainment\/stoner-john-williams-meaning\/\">whether it was a wasted life<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p><em>A good place to start:<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/free-video-course-feeling-gods-presence\/?utm_source=wordpress&amp;utm_medium=article-inline&amp;utm_content=hero\"><strong>The Beginner&#8217;s Guide to Feeling God&#8217;s Presence Every Day<\/strong><\/a>. A short video and guide for finding meaning in ordinary days, not only the big ones. <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/free-video-course-feeling-gods-presence\/?utm_source=wordpress&amp;utm_medium=article-inline&amp;utm_content=hero\">Get the free guide<\/a>. Free.<\/p>\n\n<h2>What You Can Do With This<\/h2>\n\n<p>You do not need a fortune for any of this. A good name is mostly made of how you treat people.<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Write your two lines.<\/strong> Le Figaro gave Nobel two sentences. Write the two sentences a stranger might write about you today. Be honest. Then write the two you would want.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Look at the gap.<\/strong> Do not fix all of it. Pick one small thing this week that belongs to the second version. A visit. A thank-you. Help that nobody asked for.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Not sure what you want the two lines to say?<\/strong> This free <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/what-are-my-core-values\/\">core values quiz<\/a> takes a few minutes and can help you name what matters most to you.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<h2>The 2026 Nobel Prize Announcements This Week<\/h2>\n\n<p>Here are the dates, from the Nobel Foundation:<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Medicine: Monday 5 October<\/li>\n<li>Physics: Tuesday 6 October<\/li>\n<li>Chemistry: Wednesday 7 October<\/li>\n<li>Literature: Thursday 8 October<\/li>\n<li>Peace: Friday 9 October<\/li>\n<li>Economics: Monday 12 October<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>New names will be read out. Many of them will belong to people who worked for decades on something few others noticed.<\/p>\n\n<p>When you hear them, remember the name on the prize itself. It was once printed in a newspaper as a man who could hardly be called a benefactor of humanity. He was still alive when it ran. He had eight more years, and he used them.<\/p>\n\n<p>You are reading this, so you have some time too.<\/p>\n\n<p><em>Sources: the Nobel Foundation&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nobelprize.org\/prizes\/about\/prize-announcement-dates\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2026 announcement dates<\/a> and its page on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nobelprize.org\/alfred-nobel\/alfred-nobels-will\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Alfred Nobel&#8217;s will<\/a>; an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africaninsider.com\/world\/five-things-know-nobel-prizes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">AFP report on the Le Figaro notice<\/a>, including biographer Ingrid Carlberg&#8217;s comment; and <a href=\"https:\/\/riviste.fupress.net\/index.php\/subs\/article\/download\/2536\/1858\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a study in the journal Substantia<\/a> on where the &#8220;merchant of death&#8221; story came from.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<h2>Discussion Question<\/h2>\n\n<p>The famous &#8220;merchant of death&#8221; headline has never been found, but the story is still told every year. Do you think one harsh sentence from a stranger can really change the way a person lives? Or does real change always take years? Tell us what you think in the comments below.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"6491fb8269\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/6491fb8269\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>Share This<\/h2>\n\n<p><strong>Post 1:<\/strong> Everyone &#8220;knows&#8221; Alfred Nobel read a headline calling him the merchant of death. Nobody has ever found it. What the newspaper really printed is quieter, and stranger. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=117896<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Post 2:<\/strong> In 1888 a paper said Alfred Nobel could hardly be called &#8220;a benefactor of humanity.&#8221; Seven years later his will set up prizes for &#8220;the greatest benefit to humankind.&#8221; Almost the same words, turned around. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=117896<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Post 3:<\/strong> Small thing I learned today: the Nobel Prizes are handed out on 10 December. Not Alfred Nobel&#8217;s birthday. The day he died. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=117896<\/p>\n\n<h2>Q&amp;A: Alfred Nobel, the Obituary and the Nobel Prizes<\/h2>\n\n<h3>Did Alfred Nobel really read his own obituary?<\/h3>\n<p>A newspaper did report Alfred Nobel&#8217;s death by mistake while he was alive. In April 1888 his older brother Ludvig died in Cannes, France, and the Paris newspaper Le Figaro mixed up the two brothers in a short notice. The paper corrected it the next day. Whether Alfred Nobel read the notice himself, and how he felt about it, is not known. His biographer Ingrid Carlberg has said the incident is not mentioned in his letters.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Did a newspaper call Alfred Nobel the &#8220;merchant of death&#8221;?<\/h3>\n<p>No one has found a newspaper that did. The headline &#8220;The merchant of death is dead&#8221; is part of a well-known story about Alfred Nobel, but historians have not been able to find it in any newspaper from 1888. The notice that has been found, in Le Figaro, said roughly: &#8220;A man who can hardly be called a benefactor of humanity died yesterday in Cannes. It is Mr. Nobel, inventor of dynamite.&#8221; The &#8220;merchant of death&#8221; version appears to have spread through a biography published in 1959.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Why did Alfred Nobel create the Nobel Prizes?<\/h3>\n<p>Alfred Nobel never fully explained why he created the Nobel Prizes. His will, signed in Paris on 27 November 1895, left about 94 percent of his fortune for yearly prizes to those who had brought &#8220;the greatest benefit to humankind.&#8221; The popular story says a mistaken obituary in 1888 shocked him into it, but there is no proof of that. Historians also point to his long friendship with the peace campaigner Bertha von Suttner, who probably influenced the peace prize.<\/p>\n\n<h3>When are the 2026 Nobel Prizes announced?<\/h3>\n<p>The 2026 Nobel Prizes are announced from 5 to 12 October 2026. The dates are: Medicine on Monday 5 October, Physics on Tuesday 6 October, Chemistry on Wednesday 7 October, Literature on Thursday 8 October, Peace on Friday 9 October, and Economic Sciences on Monday 12 October.<\/p>\n\n<h3>When did Alfred Nobel die, and why are the Nobel Prizes given on 10 December?<\/h3>\n<p>Alfred Nobel died on 10 December 1896 in San Remo, Italy, at the age of 63. The Nobel Prizes are presented each year on 10 December because it is the anniversary of his death. 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Here is what the newspaper really said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":117895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3589],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bgodinspired-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117897,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117896\/revisions\/117897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}