The nickname arose from a bizarre incident in 1888. That year Alfred Nobel’s brother Ludvig had died while staying in Cannes, France. The French newspapers reported Ludvig’s death but confused him with Alfred, and one paper sported the headline “Le marchand de la mort est mort” (“The merchant of death is dead.”). It then stated that Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and other explosives, had “became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before.” It is widely believed that Nobel established the prizes to avoid precisely the sort of posthumous reputation suggested by this premature obituary.
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