It's Shockingly Easy To Be Nominated For A Nobel Peace Prize

Here's a little secret about the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s really easy to get nominated. (Video via Nobel Foundation) 

So much so, that past nominees include Benito Mussolini (1935), Adolf Hitler (1939) and Joseph Stalin (1945 and 1949). And those are just the dictators on the list.

Convicted killer and Crips gang co-founder-turned-anti-gang activist, Stanley "Tookie" Williams had not one, but five nods. 

Talk show host Rush Limbaugh has also been nominated.

And so has Vladimir Putin.

It's shockingly easy to get nominated. Partly because there's no cap on the number of nominees in a given year. (Video via Nobel Foundation) 

In 2015 alone there were 273 candidates in the running.

Now, as Alfred Nobel envisioned it, the Peace Prize should go to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

Surely, all 273 of this year's candidates don't fit that description. But they don't have to.

The actual nominating rules are a bit more lax. Really, the only rule is you can’t nominate yourself.

Instead, all you have to do is convince anyone who meets this set of fairly broad criteria to submit a nomination on your behalf — either by mail or simply by emailing the Norwegian Nobel Committee. The deadline for submission, by the way, is Feb. 1.

This video includes images from Getty Images, U.S. Signal Corps., California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, The Royal Library, and A1B2C3D4 / CC BY SA 3.0 DE.