Today is Friday, July the 29th, 2022.

Welcome to the Daily Article Podcast.

I'm Chris Elkins with the Denison Forum, narrating today's article, written by Dr. Jim Denison.

Tony Dow, a teenage star in the popular 1950s and 60s comedy series Leave it to Viver, died Wednesday at his California home

at the age of 77. Since many of you are not old enough to remember the show and others of you have

likely not thought about it in years, why am I beginning today's article with this news? Because Mr. Dow's

death was erroneously reported the day before he died. It seems his

distraught wife believed her husband was dead and notified his management team who reported

his death to the world. He was actually still alive, but in hospice care suffering from cancer,

he passed away the next day. This story brought to mind one of the most

famous cases of mistaken death in history. In 1888, a man named Ludwig Nobel died in France

from a heart attack. However, at least one French newspaper believed that Ludwig's better known

brother, Alfred, had perished and proceeded to write a scathing

obituary, branding him as a merchant of death. This was because Alfred had invented dynamite

and had become hugely wealthy from nearly 100 factories that made explosives and munitions.

After this erroneous obituary,

one biographer said Alfred Nobel

became so obsessed with his posthumous reputation

that he rewrote his last will,

bequeathing most of his fortune

to a cause upon which no future obituary writer

would be able to cast aspersions.

...