5 of the World’s Most Devastating Financial Crises

He (Maybe) Was Not Great at Math

Ptolemy: world map
Ptolemy's map of the world, as printed at Ulm, 1482.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
At the time Columbus made his famous journey, a lot of overseas travel was guesswork. The exact size of the planet Earth was unknown, and there were two main ways of measuring degrees of latitude—the method developed by the Greek philosopher Poseidonius and the method developed by the medieval Arabs. In making his own calculations, Columbus argued that the circumference yielded by both methods was the same…ignoring, or forgetting, that Arab miles were longer than Roman miles. Using that data, which ultimately rendered the planet about 25 percent smaller, Columbus assured his backers that his small wooden ships could make it from Spain to Japan in 30 days. Some scholars think Columbus willfully misrepresented the distance, but the jury is still out.

7 Nobel Prize Scandals
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BY Amy Tikkanen

Photos.com/Thinkstock
The Nobel Prizes were first presented in 1901 and have since become some of the most-prestigious awards in the world. However, for all their pomp and circumstance, the prizes have not been untouched by scandals. Slights, questionable winners, and perceived conflicts of interest are among the controversies that have beset the prizes. Here we present a list of Nobel Prize stories that are worthy of the tabloids.

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  “Merchant of Death”
  

Alfred Nobel
Alfred Nobel, portrait by Emil Österman, 1915; in the Nobel Foundation, Stockholm.
© Photos.com/Jupiterimages
Nobel controversies go all the way back to the prizes’ founder, Alfred Bernhard Nobel. As the Swedish inventor of dynamite and other explosives, Nobel did not have the best public image. In fact, when his brother died, a French newspaper confused him with Alfred and used the headline “The merchant of death is dead.” It then stated that Nobel “became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before.” The premature obituary was possibly what motivated Nobel to create the namesake prizes in order to enhance his legacy.

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