The Nobel brothers, later of Nobel prize fame, made their first fortune selling land mines to Tsar Nicholas I.
In 1879, the brothers Ludwig and Robert Nobel founded the Nobel Brothers Oil Company and began buying land in the town of Baku (of Azerbaijan, Russia) when oil was found there.
In 1900, Baku, a small town on the western edge of the Caspian sea, produced half the world's oil.
The town boasted garish displays of wealth never before seen, but it was so poisoned with oil that the life expectancy of its residents was only thirty.
Its own governor called it 'the most dangerous place in Russia.' For Stalin, it was the 'Oil Kingdom.'
Alfred invented dynamite, but Ludwig's invention of the oil tanker was almost as important.