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Over the years, there have been numerous false reports of the deaths of some of the world’ best-known personalities. Among them, baseball great Joe DiMaggio is reported to have seen a live broadcast announcing his death while watching television. After Ernest Hemingway was nearly killed in a 1954 plane crash, newspapers across the country mistakenly wrote of his demise. As a sort of cosmic joke, Hemingway retaliated by keeping a scrapbook of obituaries which he allegedly read each morning while drinking a glass of champagne. Of course there was Mark Twain’s famous retort to his premature obituary: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”

And then there was this dramatic headline: “The Merchant of Death is Dead.” Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, awoke on the morning of April 13, 1888 to read that heading over his obituary. The notice was printed in error. It was in fact Alfred’s brother, Ludvig who had died.

To Alfred, the shock was overwhelming because it was at that…