2. Alfred Nobel
Alfred Nobel is perhaps the example of the most famous of premature death announcements. In 1888, Ludvig Nobel (brother of Alfred) passed away, causing several newspapers of the day to publish obituaries of Alfred. A popular French obituary ran with the headline 'Le marchand de la mort est mort' which means 'The merchant of death is dead.' They went on to say that Nobel 'became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before' (but in French, obviously). Due to Nobel's invention of dynamite, his death was met as extremely popular and as he was still alive he was rather understandably concerned that people were happy that he had passed on. It is this strange set of events that caused Nobel to bequeath the vast bulk of his worldly estate to his newly formed Nobel Prize in 1895, celebrating the very best of Humanity. Unfortunately, Nobel died in 1896.