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One day in 1912, Franz Reichelt had a sudden flash of inspiration.
Today would be the day he became the first man in history to glide from the Eiffel Tower
to the ground wearing nothing but a flying suit.
What could ever go wrong?
He hadn’t had the time to test his innovative suit yet, but he was a professional tailor
— he had faith in his work and the conviction he’d reach the ground successfully.
As his colleagues put a stool in place for him to mount at the top of the 1000-foot tower,
he took a gulp and slowly climbed on top.
It was a long way down...
But let’s leave Franz at the summit contemplating his rash decision for a while.
p He’s not the only lunatic — sorry, I mean innovative inventor — the human race
has known.
Thomas Midgley was an acclaimed engineer and chemist who obtained over one hundred patents.
And he certainly had a knack for creations that would turn out to be dangerous, destructive,
or toxic.
First, he had the genius idea of adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline to solve the problem of engine
knocking in cars.
It worked — but it also turned out to damage the environment and the public.
The man even gave himself lead poisoning in the process.
But he wasn’t deterred.
His next move was the invention of chlorofluorocarbon, or CFC.
You know, the stuff that aerosols release that damages the ozone layer.
At the time, CFC was revered as a pioneering invention that would stop refrigerators leaking
dangerous substances and gases.
CFC was believed to be inflammable, stable, noncorrosive, and safe for humans to breathe.
To prove its safety, Midgley himself inhaled a sizeable amount of the gas.
As we now know, he turned out to be misled.
But amazingly, Thomas Midgley wasn’t killed by CFC or lead, although his run-ins no doubt
did him some damage.
Instead, his life took a tragic turn when he contracted polio in 1944 at the young age
of 51.
Still convinced of his ingenuity as an inventor, Midgley went ahead and invented something.
This time, it didn’t involve any chemicals or toxic substances: it was a simple yet smart
system of strings and pulleys to help him pull himself out of bed independently.
Sounds harmless, right?
For a few years, the system worked great, helping Midgley retain the modicum of dignity
he still had left after poisoning all of humanity twice.
But one day he became entangled in the ropes, which strangled him to death.
Once again, he’d done himself in.
Okay, so maybe you’re asking for trouble when you go around meddling with chemicals
and giving huge, heavy contraptions to people who have become semi-paralyzed.
But William Bullock was a much more sensible man.
He came up with practical inventions like the grain drill, seed planter, and eventually
the rotary printing press, designed to increase the speed of printing.
Surely such a pioneering man wouldn’t have a silly ending?
Well, you’ve seen the title of the video, you already know the answer.
Just two years after his brilliant invention that would revolutionize the printing industry,
Bullock had a nasty accident whilst adjusting his rotary press.
His leg got caught in the machine and was promptly crushed.
I guess health and safety regulations weren’t much of a concern in 1867.
The inventor didn’t die instantly, but it was the start of the end.
He contracted gangrene in the wound and ended up dying a few days later.
It’s a tragic tale.
Now, are you ready for something really crazy?
Dying was the last thing Alexander Bogdanov had in mind — in fact, he’d hoped to become
immortal.
Bear with me here.
A true polymath, Bogdanov was a science fiction writer, doctor, and cybernetics enthusiast.
But it was his passion for medical research that would lead him down a path of insanity
and eventually cause his dire end.
Researching blood transfusions, Bogdanov became interested in their application to extending
lives — or, in other words, making people immortal.
You can tell he was a fan of science fiction.
The man was so convinced he was on to something that he performed multiple transfusions on
himself before having any proper evidence.
It seemed to go well at first and he enthusiastically published study after study about the positive
effects of transfusions.
He was convinced his eyesight had improved and even that he’d stopped balding.
Unfortunately, Bogdanov didn’t pay much attention to where the blood was coming from.
One day, he underwent a transfusion from a student who turned out to have malaria, which
would lead to his death in 1928.
Would it have really been that terrible to be bald and wear glasses?
You might say that these inventors didn’t know any better, but in the case of Horace
Hunley, he almost certainly did.
Hunley made submarines, which is pretty cool.
What isn’t so cool is that he made lousy submarines.
His first submarine sank — and not in a good submarine-y way, but in a sank-to-the-bottom-of-the-ocean-to-be-never
found again way.
Then he built a second submarine, and that sank too.
But Hunley wasn’t one to lose confidence that easily, so he went on to build a third
submarine.
He even funded it with his own money, because presumably sponsorship money was drying up
by that point, and named it after himself.
Bold.
Sometimes faith is all you need, but not when it comes to science and engineering.
The submarine sank in 1963 with Hunley and seven other crew-members inside, who all died.
He obviously hadn’t got the memo that insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting
different results.
Speaking of insanity, it’s now time to look at possibly the craziest guy on the list.
His idea was so mad that even Evel Knievel, one of the best-known stunt performers and
daredevils ever, tried to warn him against it.
Enter the Czechoslovakian stuntman Karel Soucek.
He had the genius idea to cross the super-dangerous Niagara Falls whirlpool using various vehicles.
First, he tried a moped along the cables of a trolley, but failed when he hit a bolt and
was derailed.
Luckily he was wearing a safety harness, which stopped him falling into the whirlpool.
He lived to tell the tale.
Then, he tried the same thing again in a barrel of steel.
This time, he ended up stranded for hours in the whirlpool.
Eventually he was rescued, and once again he survived, although the police charged him
for performing an unlicensed stunt.
But he wasn’t prepared to give up just yet.
Soucek’s idea of fun is clearly very different from ours, because he decided to cross the
whirlpool in a barrel again.
Only this time, he custom-built a barrel himself, made of lightweight metal and plastic to be
shock-absorbent.
It even had a two-way radio and a counterweight in one end to ensure Soucek never landed headfirst.
The barrel may have been well-thought-out, but crossing the whirlpool in a home-made
contraption was a mad move.
That’s why Evel Knievel tried to step in — but Soucek wasn’t listening to anyone.
So, he set off.
But something was wrong.
The barrel started spinning as it plunged down, so instead of landing in the tank that
had been placed at the bottom to weather the landing, it hit the edge.
This made a larger impact than planned, giving Soucek a fractured skull and crushing his
chest.
He was rushed to the hospital and died.
Worse of all, the spectacle was part of the Thrill Show and Destruction Derby, and there
was an entire audience watching the event take place.
Since Soucek was inside the barrel, the spectators didn’t realize what had happened, so they
clapped and cheered with the impression the stunt had been successful.
Bet they felt bad afterward.
Believe it or not, things get crazier.
Michael Dacre had a dream.
His dream was — wait for it — to build a flying car.
We’ve all been there.
Only, he actually tried to make his dream a reality.
He became a pilot for the British army and started his own flight crewing service.
That’s when he invented the Jetpod: a tiny airplane designed to have a short take-off
and landing, allowing air passengers to travel straight from airports in the middle of nowhere
to city centers.
One day, he was testing his prototype in Malaysia.
Three times in a row he tried and failed to set off , but he refused to take this as a
warning sign.
He kept trying.
On the fourth attempt, Dacre successfully set off into the air — but instead of a
gradual takeoff, the vehicle shot up vertically into the sky and plummeted straight down to
earth.
Dacre was killed in the crash.
Because it went so well for Dacre, an engineer called Henry Smolinski decided to give the
whole flying car thing another go in 1973.
One day, he thought he’d created the perfect flying machine, so he drove it off the Eiffel
Tower as a test run, a-la-Franz.
Nah, I’m just kidding.
But Henry did build a prototype.
He fused a Ford Pinto with the rear end of an airplane.
Don’t ask me why he chose a Ford Pinto as the vehicle of choice for this flagship project.
The team also developed a set of adapters so the driver could control the ailerons of
the plane with the steering wheel.
One day, Smolinski went ahead with an impromptu test of his flying car.
Unfortunately, the car had suffered faulty welding and loose parts, and the wing strut
detached.
The weight was also way too much for the engine.
Along with his business partner, Smolinski died in a pillar of black smoke.
You might have noticed a theme here: people getting into accidents after trying to invent
some kind of vehicle.
Well, Valerian Abakovsky is no exception, and no less insane.
He’d invented something called the Aerowagon: a high-speed railcar complete with an aircraft
engine and propeller traction that he wanted to use to transport Soviet officials between
major cities.
One day, he gave the vehicle a test run.
I know, you’ve heard it all before.
The test run went fine — for the outgoing journey.
But on the return, the car was going at a high speed when it derailed, killing Abakosvky
and five other Communists.
I’m not done yet.
Rocket science has a bad rep for its difficulty, but that wasn’t going to deter Max Valier.
After reading about the joys of rockets, he set out on a mission to develop a rocket-powered
car.
Don’t worry, he wasn’t hoping for it to fly, he just wanted it to go really, really
fast.
Eventually, he created a car that could go at 250 miles an hour.
Perfect and so useful — if what you’re looking for is a car with the capacity to
cause road accidents.
He then began to work on a rocket-assisted aircraft.
In 1920, Max was working on a rocket motor made of liquid oxygen-gasoline, when the entire
thing exploded.
A piece of shrapnel flew into one of his arteries, severing it and killing him.
The car never came to be, but Max’s death wasn’t in vain — the technology he worked
on helped the first man land on the moon.
Now, ready to hear something gruesome?
It’s not just in the last few centuries that it’s become in vogue for inventors
to kill themselves using their own inventions.
As early as 221 BC, influential politician Li Si got in on the trend.
Li Si invented a torture method called the Five Pains, which involved cutting off the
nose, hand, and foot of a person before castrating them and killing them by cutting them in half.
He was a real charmer.
Some inventors want to make the world a better place, others just want to find more ways
to bring suffering.
When Li Si was convicted of treason, he got a taste of his own medicine and met the same
fate.
And they say Karma isn’t real.
But back to our plucky tailor Franz who is still waiting at the top of the Eiffel Tower,
ready to jump.
Franz had designed his wingsuit based on the principle that, by adding more surface area
to the body, humans would be able to descend to the ground slowly and gracefully.
Luckily, he wasn’t so deluded that he thought a special suit alone could enable humans to
fly — he also added in a parachute that would be released during the fall.
What could ever go wrong?
Remember, this wingsuit had never actually been tested.
The original plan was to have a test run with a dummy, but Franz was something of a free
spirit.
For him, it was a matter of pride to show faith in his inventions and take the first
jump with no evidence behind him.
The wingsuit he created looked like a cloak with a big hood, so it’s hard to be optimistic
about its effectiveness.
But what about the parachute?
Surely that would save him, right?
To activate the parachute, all Franz had to do was extend his arms out to put his body
into a cross position.
Only, the parachute collapsed around him, so he had a free fall to the ground.
He died of a heart attack before he’d even reached the bottom.
Check out our videos about dreams that can kill you in real life and people who have
died by taking selfies.