Douglas Brunt

He had a factory in northern Russia by St.

Petersburg that was building boilers and steam engines, diesel engines, and munitions for the Tsar's army and navy.

He also, along with his father, had established the Russian petroleum industry in southern Russia by the Caspian Sea in Baku, modern-day Azerbaijan, but then part of the Russian Empire.

And it will get, I guess, more into this, but it becomes the largest oil concern in the world, surpassing even standard oil by 1900.

So it's funny, my editor and I would joke that one writer's footnote can be another writer's book.

And so in this case, one of my own footnotes, which was a sort of tangent piece about Emmanuel Nobel in the Diesel book, then Nobel became my own whole next book.

Yeah, so he was Alfred's nephew.

And in fact, when Emmanuel's father Ludwig died, there were huge names around the world.

Ludwig Nobel died in 1888.

And it was a large enough figure that it was global headlines.

So over in France, there's Alfred Nobel who picks up his French morning newspaper to read his own obituary.

The newspaper had messed up.

They've confused Ludwig for Alfred.

So Alfred reads his own obituary, though he's alive and well.

calls him a merchant of death for his dynamite and responsible for more deaths around the world than anyone else.

He then decides, well, this is not the way I want to be remembered, so establishes the prizes.

But over in Russia, Emmanuel Nobel had essentially founded the largest oil concern in the world.

And under the czars of Russia,

was probably the most important figure leading into the Great War.

He controlled more oil than anyone else when the world started.