We've all had tough days on the job, but when you're an inventor, kicking down the doors
of science, things going wrong can mean more than just a bad day.
Your groundbreaking inventions just might turn on you, as these doomed inventors demonstrated...
Karel Soucek
In 1985, Canadian stuntman Karel Soucek attempted a stunt so insane, even Evel Knievel tried
to talk him out of it.
In front of 35,000 people at the Houston Astrodome, Soucek climbed into a specially balanced barrel
of his own design and invention and had assistants drop him toward a nine-foot-deep, 12-foot-wide
tub of water, 180 feet below.
It didn't go as planned.
The barrel began tumbling immediately, drifted off-course, and struck the rim of the tub,
fracturing Soucek's skull and crushing his chest and abdomen.
The crowd sat in stunned silence as the stuntman, somehow still alive, was cut from the barrel
and whisked away by paramedics.
He died shortly thereafter.
Sabin Arnold von Sochocky
In the 1920s, Sabin Arnold von Sochocky invented glow-in-the-dark paint, which he cleverly
called Undark.
The good news was that glow-in-the-dark-stuff is pretty great.
The bad news is that Sochocky's version included radium, which is highly radioactive.
Sochocky had a successful company that, every day, produced both the paint and thousands
of glowing watch dials covered in the stuff — despite the fact that workers were dying
of cancer-related ailments.
Though a lawsuit was settled in the surviving workers' favor in 1928, radioactive products
continued to be produced right up through the end of World War II, all while the dangers
of radioactivity were becoming more well-known.
Decontamination studies of Sochocky's plant in Orange, New Jersey began in 1983, and continued
until 2016.
Even now, the site is being monitored, despite no radiation being detected.
Among its victim count was Sochocky himself, who succumbed to radiation poisoning in 1928.
Fred Duesenberg
The Duesenberg brothers, Fred and August, built their first auto in 1904, and by 1913,
they had established their legendary Duesenberg Motor company in Des Moines, Iowa.
By the early 1920s, Duesenberg vehicles were winning the Indy 500 on a regular basis, and
their cars are still highly respected and collectible today.
As a man who loved fast cars, Fred Duesenberg's demise was probably predictable.
In 1932, he was driving one of his vehicles at high speeds through Pennsylvania when he
hit a slick patch of road.
He flipped his car and injured his spine, and although he was initially expected to
recover, complications developed and he died of pneumonia.
William Nelson
It was early October, 1903, when 24 year-old William Nelson, an engineer for General Electric,
set out to demonstrate his invention for the first time.
It was a motor attachment for a standard bicycle, promising to one day let riders travel anywhere
they wanted without having to use their legs to pedal.
Unfortunately, the young inventor gained too much speed going down a hill, fell off the
bike, and sustained injuries that would end his life.
Michael Dacre
In 2004, inventor Michael Dacre unveiled his concept for a twin-jet, eight-seat flying
taxi that he hoped would revolutionize travel.
Designed to require very little takeoff and landing space, the Jetpod was poised to take
over the skies.
But safety was key and, after careful development, the first prototype test flight finally happened
in 2009.
"The reality for a future generation, begins with a vision today."
With Dacre aboard, the prototype struggled to achieve lift before finally rising to about
650 feet, when it lost control and plummeted to the ground, killing Dacre and his dreams
of transportation transformation.
Henry Smolinski
Flying cars have been under development as far back as 1917.
"It is my hope that this little ship will become the great great granddaddy of America's
air Flivver."
It wasn't until 1971 that things got weird.
Inventor Henry Smolinski and partner Hal Blake decided to keep it simple by adding wings
and a giant propeller from a Cessna onto a car.
To add an extra element of danger, the car was a Ford Pinto, which is widely considered
one of the most dangerous commercial vehicles ever produced, as they were prone to exploding
under certain conditions.
The combined vehicles were dubbed the Mizar.
The pair actually accomplished multiple successful test flights, but they failed to account for
a design flaw.
The wings were designed to detach while on the ground, but during a routine 1973 test
flight, they did so while in the air.
There were no survivors.
Franz Reichelt
Austrian-born Frenchman Franz Reichelt was a tailor born with no fear, seeking to make
a difference for pilots in the age of aviation.
Reichelt developed a suit which he hoped would double as a parachute in times of high-altitude
peril.
Despite protests from various aeronautic organizations, he successfully petitioned for the use of
the Eiffel Tower for his first test jump.
The French press eagerly gathered for the demonstration in the winter of 1912, and though
they'd been told a dummy would be used, Reichelt announced he would be making the jump himself.
Stepping onto a platform almost 200 feet up on the Tower, Reichelt hopped off the edge,
and plummeted to the frozen turf, with a film crew catching the tragedy as it unfolded.
Horace Hunley
Engineer and Confederate soldier H.L. Hunley built a prototype submarine called the Pioneer
for the South in 1862.
But it was destroyed by the Confederates as Union forces entered the area so that the
Yankees couldn't steal their technology.
Undaunted, Hunley built another version, The American Diver, which was promptly lost at
sea.
Another version, originally just called "Fish Boat," was built.
Hunley completed successful test runs, and manned it with eight crewmen for its first
full attack.
But five crewmen were drowned when the unsealed sub left dock prematurely.
A couple months later, after the ship had been rescued, Hunley joined another eight-man
crew for a simple test run, which ended with the vessel nose-down in the muck at the bottom
of Charleston Harbor.
This time nobody survived, including Hunley himself, and the ship was lost for weeks.
The Confederates once again salvaged it, renamed it after Hunley, and put it into service.
On its first mission, it rammed the USS Housatonic with an attached torpedo, destroying it, and
killing five of the 155 crewmen on the larger vessel.
But while it still sank the enemy ship, it was a pyrrhic victory at best.
Once again, the Hunley sank, killing everyone on board, officially claiming more people
by accident than it ever did on purpose.
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