20 - Thomas Midgley Jr • Midgley, an American chemist who invented
leaded petrol • People loved this guy when he was alive,
everyone uses petrol, but he was also voted the single biggest organism to cause damage
to the atmosphere in Earth's history • He eventually contracted Polio and lead
poisoning, leaving his basically crippled • He invented a series of pulleys and ropes
to lift himself out of bed, but it was these that killed him
• At 55 years of age, a pulley suffocated Thomas and killed him, ironic that 2 of his
own inventions caused his early death 19 - Henry Smolinski
• 1973, Henry was a Northrop-trained engineer who started his company Advanced Vehicle Engineers,
their mission, to bring the flying car to life
• They built their first couple of prototypes out of airplane parts glued on the back of
a Ford Pinto • However, on September 11 of that year,
during a test flight a wing strut detached from the car and killed Henry along with his
assistant Blake • The cause: bad welding
18 - William Bullock • A common horror story, getting your limbed
trapped in a rotary printing press • It's creator, William, couldn't escape
the same nightmare • He tried to kick a driving belt onto one
of the pulleys, but it caught his leg, swallowed and crushed it
• He survived, but 9 days later during an operation to amputate from remained of the
gangrenous-infected leg, he died on the table 17 - Horace Lawson Hunley
• 1862, Horace was a full-time lawyer, part-time submarine lover
• It was he that designed and built 3 different models of subs for the Confederacy during
the Civil War, but it was that third that stopped him from designing more
• The first two sunk, and the 3rd also sunk but this time with Horace inside it, ironic
since the sub also carried his name • It was recovered from the sea floor and
went on to house another crew but, once again, sank to the bottom of the sea
16 - Franz Reichelt, the Parachute Suit • February 4th, 1912, Franz the Austrian-born
French tailor decides to test his suit by jumping off the Eiffel Tower despite the protests
of his friends and audience • He jumped off the first platform, the
parachute failed to deploy and he, of course, fell to his death
• It was designed to be used by pilots in escaping damaged planes, but instead it ended
up a crumple bloody mess at the foot of the Eiffel tower
15 - Michael Dacre • A recent one, 2009, it was August 16th
when Michael, a British aviation pioneer and director of the company Avcen Ltd, performed
his first test flight in a so called "flying-taxi" designed to transport people across long distances
at minimal cost • But during the flight above the Malaysian
capital Kuala Lumpur, the taxi plumeted to Earth and exploded in Michael's face, ending
his life 14 - Marie Curie
• 1934, Marie was a physicist best known for her work in radioactivity
• She scored herself 2 nobel prizes for discovering the elements radium and polonium,
a big deal since she's one of 2 people, ever, to win multiple nobel prizes
• Inevitably though, her work in the field of radiation also led to her death - too late
she discovered the harmful and lethal effect radioactivity can have on a person
• She died July 4th 1934, from aplastic anemia caused by radiation exposure
13 - Otto Lilienthal, the Hand Glider • August 10th, 1896, Otto a German aviation
pioneer was busy testing his gliders in the hills of Germany
• It was on his last flight that his fabled Glider stalled, and he fell 50 ft straight
to the ground, but he didn't die instantly, no, he suffered from a fractured cervical
vertebra, fell unconcious and 36 hours later he died
12 - J.G Parry-Thomas • 1926, J.G was a Welsh motor-racing driver
and also an engineer • His goal: to break the land speed record
set by Malcolm Campbell, and to do that he needed to build a racing car
• He called it Babs, and on April 27th he beat that record, and held it for an entire
year • Malcolm took it back, so J.G set about
beating his record again • However, this time, a chain snapped off
the car and partially decapitated J.G, killing him instantly in one of the fastest cars ever
11 - Karel Soucek • 1984, Czechoslovakian stuntman Soucek
went over Niagra Falls in a shock-absorbent barrel
• He survived, cut and bleeding, but alive, so he decided to house a museum dedicated
to showing off his stunt equipment • To finance it, he convinced a company
to sponser another stunt, to fall from the Houston Astrodome in another barrel
• People tried to talk him out of it, but he paid no attention, the barrel spun dangerously
and crushed Soucek to death upon landing 10 - Sylvester H. Roper
• 1896, Roper, inventor of the original motorcycle along with the earliest carriage
known to man built in 1863 • It was during his ride on one of his own
steam velocipede motorbikes that he died, the cause?
Heart attack, but it's unknown whether the heart attack was caused by his falling off
the bike, or it was simple heart failure 9 - Wan Hu
• During the 16th century, Wan was a minor Chinese official in the Ming Dynasty
• At the time, China was building advanced rocket and firework technology, and Wan decided
to sit on a chair made of these to launch himself into outer space, yes, that's right,
he built a rocket chair • 47 servants lit fuses, there was colossal
explosion and, when the smoke cleared, Wan was gone
• Dead, of course, even if he somehow reached outer space
8 - Perillos of Athens • This is one guy who might've actually
deserved to die • Perillos invented the hollow bull, a type
of torture contraption designed to swallow a person, have fires lit underneath and slowly
burn the victim to death, making it look as though the bull were breathing smoke
• Perillos pitched the invention to a Tyrant lord of Acragas of Siciliy, and Perillos was
stuffed into the bull and burnt alive 7 - Cowper Phipps Coles
• 1870, Cowper was a big-shot in the Royal Navy, a Captain, and he invented rotating
turrets for ships during the Crimean War • Following the war he decided to do his
own thing and build his own ships using the same revolutionary design
• He included a few dangerous additions though, including a "hurricane" deck, one
that raised the ship's centre of gravity • Then, on the 6th of September, his ship
capsized killing both Cowper and his 500 person crew
6 - Valerian Abakovsky • 1921, Abakovsky was 25 years old when
he designed the Aerowagon, a fast railcar equipped with an aircraft engine and propellor
- a sort of taxi for the Soviet officials to ferry them to and from Moscow
• July 24th, a small group of communists along with Abakovsky, engaged the Aerowagon
in a test run to Tula from Moscow, and managed it, but on the way back derailed and killing
everyone aboard 5 - Alexander Bogdanov
• 1924, blood transfusions - originally he hoped to attain eternal youth or at least
regeneration of the cells • He performed a large number of transfusions
on himself, and while it improved his eyesight, eventually he accidentally transfused himself
with the blood of someone suffering from malaria and tuberculosis, killing him soon after
4 - Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier • 1785, Rozier a French chemistry and physics
teacher, as well as a pioneer in the field of aviation, built an air balloon known as
the Roziere balloon when it suddenly deflated • It crashed in Pas-de-calais when he attempted
to fly it over the English Channel • Only he and his friend Pierre Romain died,
but they became the first fatalities of an air crash ever
3 - Henry Winstanley • 1703, a famous English lighthouse architech,
who constructed what was known as the first Eddystone lighthouse
• He was concerned about its strength though, so and 5 others decided to stay inside it
during a storm • Naturally, the lighthouse collapsed and
crushed all 6 occupants to death 2 - Max Valier
• 1930, Max was a pioneer in rocketry technology, so he decided to use it for rocket-powered
cars and aircraft • Liquid fuel had just become a thing at
the time, so on April 19th, Max performed the first test drive of a rocket car using
that liquid fuel • Since the fuel was based on alcohol, it
easily caught fire on his test bench, exploded, and killed Max instantly
1 - Aurel Vlaicu • 1912, Aurul, a Romanian engineer, inventor
and airplane constructor won tons of prizes for his ability to land, projectile throw
and fly airplanes • 1913, he died attempting to be the first
person to fly across the Carpathian Mountains