Most inventors put plenty of time, effort and money into the inventions which they hope will make them rich and famous, and change the world for the better. But what if the invention that you have painstakingly developed ends up killing you instead?
It happens… maybe not often, but it certainly happens.
Henry Winstanley was a famous English lighthouse architect. He constructed the first Eddystone lighthouse and had so much faith in it that he insisted on being inside it during a storm. The lighthouse collapsed. Winstanley and five other people perished.
Alexander Bogdanov was a Russian physician, science fiction writer, economist, philosopher, and revolutionary. One of his scientific experiments involved blood transfusion. Bogdanov made the decision to give himself a transfusion of blood which he acquired from one of his patients who suffered from tuberculosis and malaria. He became infected and suffered a horrible death.
Franz Reichelt was an Austrian tailor who designed a bizarre overcoat/parachute creation that he claimed could glide. He confidently decided to prove his theory from the first deck of the famous Eiffel Tower. In front of a group of interested spectators, he launched himself but, instead of gliding gently to the ground, he proceeded to fall straight down, dying on impact.
Thomas Midgley was an American chemist who invented leaded petrol and CFCs. He has, because of his inventions, come to be known as “the one human responsible for more deaths than any other in history”. His exposure to his inventions caused him to contract Polio and lead poisoning. Even whilst lying disabled in bed he could not quench his inventive mind, so he devised an elaborate system of pulleys and ropes to help lift himself from his bed. At the age of 55, after suffering strangulation by one of his ropes in pulleys, he died - impressively killing himself by two of his inventions.
Marie Curie, a French-Polish chemist and physicist, is famous for discovering a host of new elements, including polonium and radium. She also discovered the theory of radioactivity and the isolation of isotopes which are radioactive. She was the joint winner of the Nobel Prize in 1903 (along with her husband Pierre). She died from aplastic anemia on July 4, 1934, most likely contracted from exposure to radiation. The damaging effects regarding ionising radiation were unknown then, and much of her work had been done in a shed with no safety measures. She had carried test tubes containing the isotopes in her pocket and stored them in her desk drawer. She commented on the pretty blue-green light that the substances gave off when it was dark.