The truth behind the Nobel Peace Prize is fascinating. It is one of the world’s highest honors and is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and weapons manufacturer Alfred Nobel.
According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who in the preceding year "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
This is interesting because Nobel’s life was spent making tools for war. He was fascinated by nitroglycerin and is credited with inventing dynamite, ballistite, detonators, blasting caps, gelignite, cordite and other explosives.
According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, his friendship with Bertha von Suttner, a peace activist and later recipient of the prize, profoundly influenced his decision to include peace as a category. Some Nobel scholars suggest it was Nobel's way to compensate for developing destructive forces.
Others speculate he may have developed the category in 1864 when he read a headline in the press, who mistakenly took his brother’s death as his own. The obituary stated, "The merchant of death is dead” and went on to say, "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”
Nobel’s life proves, it’s never too late to refresh the peace. As Biggie Smalls would say, “If you don’t know, now you know.”
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