Number of words: 446

Nobel is not the only prominent figure whose premature death report precipitated a reaction of historical proportions. In early June of 1897, Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, was hiding away in London, still mourning the death of his eldest daughter, Susy, and working to make a dent in his considerable debt. (Some ill conceived business ventures had drained coffers that had once overflowed with proceeds from his successful writing and speaking.) Now he worked diligently, joylessly, to churn out new work for publication. Meanwhile, Clemens’s wife, broken hearted by the death of her daughter, was growing increasingly frail. Just a couple of months earlier, Clemens had written this line in his notebook: OF THE DEMONSTRABLY WISE there are but two, those who commit suicide, and those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied with drink.

Then, amid this melancholy, came a knock at the door. Clemens opened it to find Frank Marshall White, a young correspondent from the New York Journal. In his hand were two telegrams from his stateside editor. It seems word had spread that Clemens, then 61 years old, was gravely ill. Perhaps even dead. The editor had instructed his man via cable gram: “If Mark Twain dying in poverty, in London, send 500 words. Displaying the cold calculation of a true newspaperman, he followed with a second: “If Mark Twain has died in poverty send 1,000 words.”

Although Twain was under considerable financial and emotional stress, he was not sick. But his cousin James Ross Clemens had been. A doctor who worked in London, James Ross had recently paid his famous cousin a visit and fallen ill while he was at his home. London newspapers, learning that a man by the name of Clemens had fallen ill at the address belonging to Twain, reported that the famous writer was ailing. (Like the Nobel error, this shoddy reporting could have been prevented had someone chosen to dispatch a correspondent to the home of the great man.) And that was enough for the next day’s edition. Earlier in the year, rumors of Clemens’s desperate financial situation had reached American shores. Now came word that he was dying. Or was already dead. Clemens looked at the cablegrams. The paper had made a mistake, and now he was faced with commenting on his pending, if erroneous demise. First he explained the error to the reporter, noting that his cousin was now fully recovered. Then he let loose with one of his more famous, and more misquoted, lines: “The report of my illness grew out of his illness, the report of my death was an exaggeration.”

Excerpted from page 169 of ‘Regret the Error’ by Craig Silverman