People like Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Kofi Annan, Lech Walesa and Mother Teresa have become famous all around the world. And what do they have in common?
They are all winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.
When Alfred joined the Nobel family company, it had been developing explosives for many years. Alfred's father, Immanuel, had started the family fortune by working for the Russian army to produce landmines and sea mines, which are bombs that are put under the ground or in the sea, and which explode when people move over them. But the family made even more money by manufacturing nitro–glycerine, which was an effective but very dangerous explosive.
One day, Alfred arrived home to find that his 20–year–old brother Emil had been killed in a nitro–glycerine explosion. Alfred was determined to invent a safer explosive.The result was dynamite, which became an immediate success all over the world.Alfred Nobel always wanted dynamite to be used for peaceful means. And when it was used to blast a path for the Panama Canal in 1914 he couldn't have been happier.Unfortunately, in the same year, the First World War started and, when it ended four years later, dynamite had been used to take away the lives of thousands of young men. Alfred had always hated war and considered it to be 'the horror of horrors and the greatest of all crimes'. To see his invention being used in this way made him very sad.
Sometime later Alfred's older brother Ludwig died.
One newspaper accidentally printed Alfred's obituary instead of his brother's. The obituary described Alfred as a man who had become rich by inventing a weapon of mass destruction. When Alfred read this review of his life, he was horrified and decided to do something about it. He decided that he would use the great fortune that he had made to reward people who had been working to promote good in society.
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the person who had done the most, or the best, work to promote friendship between countries, to abolish armies or to hold and promote peace conferences. In 1997 the Nobel Peace Prize went to an American called Jody Williams for her efforts to get landmines banned. Ironically, of course, the Nobel family fortunes had been built on mines. Perhaps now, Alfred Nobel will rest more easily in his grave.
