mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >
Recently, there’s been an awful lot of stories online about this years Nobel Peace Prize nominees. Including one site that actually posts odds and lets you place bets. Though the real list of nominees will remain secret until October, all the media leaks confirm that Bono will be nominated again, this year going up against the sitar player Ravi Shankar, who, besides helping victims of the tsunami disaster, is also Norah Jones’ father (serious props).
Poking around the official Nobel Peace Prize website, I noted the following interesting factoids:
1. Information about who has been nominated is kept secret for fifty years. (Unless leaked, of course.)
2. Despite 12 nominations between 1937 and 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was never awarded the Nobel Prize.
3. The backside of the actual medal depicts three naked men embracing with private parts exposed.
Hmmm, I suppose if George Bush, Kim Jong-Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took off all their clothes and gave each other a big group hug, the world would be a more peaceful place.
Comments (2)
Comment
That betting site is fascinating, although I have to admit I find most of the supposed nominees a little absurd (Oprah Winfrey? Bob Geldof? IKEA? Oh, wait, that’s IAEA). I hadn’t heard of this “Thousand Women for the Nobel Peace Prize” project before, either. If I’m reading the group’s literature correctly, it is possibly the most wildly offensive thing I have ever seen. They are basically arguing that (a) women are oppressed and never rewarded for any of the good works they do and (b) therefore a thousand random women should get the medal. The first argument seems just a tad outdated. The second seems like a recipe for a catfight… and I can say that, ’cause I’d be participating.
posted by Mary on 4-28-2006 at 6:07 am
John Green dug up this great fact about the IgNobel awards for our genius, and I thought I’d share:
–
During the annual presentation of the Ig-Nobels, the crowd traditionally throws a variety of complex paper airplanes onto the stage (you’ve gotta learn to love this geek stuff if you want to be a genius!). Harvard physics professor Roy Glauber is traditionally the “Keeper of the Broom;” i.e., the guy who sweeps up the paper airplanes. But in 2005, he had to take the year off. Why? Because he was needed in Stockholm to collect a real Nobel.
posted by Mangesh on 4-28-2006 at 7:12 am