- [Narrator] Have you ever dreamed of making an incredible discovery? Whether that's curing cancer or finding a way to end world hunger, we all wanna have a positive
impact on the world, right? Sadly, for the inventors on this list, their weird and wonderful creations turned against them in the
grisliest ways possible. So from the highest
highs to the lowest lows, let's take a look at some inventors who were killed by their own inventions. (upbeat music) Make a flap of it. Now, you'd be a fool to
think these inventors aren't the most book-smart people. In fact, some of them were
the geniuses of their day. Take Abu Nasar Al-Jawhari. He was a notable Persian scholar born in Kazakhstan sometime
in the 10th century. He worked as a lexicographer
and wrote a little book. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's called "The Dictionary." Yikes. Okay, it's not the dictionary you or I might use today. It was entirely in Arabic,
but still, smart dude. Al-Jawhari spent his days
traveling around the Middle East before settling in Nishapur
and what is modern-day Iran. But that's where things took a little turn for the worst for him. See, according to some scholars, despite being incredibly smart, Al-Jawhari began suffering
serious mental delusions about being a bird. What the cluck? In the first decade of the 11th century, Al-Jawhari climbed to the
roof of Nishapur mosque with two wooden wings he'd
spent months laboring over. Al-Jawhari believed that
with these lovingly crafted and bespoke wings, he could
realize his fantasy of flight. However, it didn't exactly go to plan. After leaping from the mosque
roof and flapping frantically, bird boy bombed beak-first
into the ground. Yikes, poor guy. I guess he hadn't yet
figured out the word dum-dum for his dictionary. Doom balloon. Being an inventor,
you've gotta be prepared to deal with a lot of failures
if you hope to strike gold. Sometimes those failures
can be pretty spectacular. Take French aviation pioneer Jean-Francois Pilate de Roziers. He went down in history for performing the first
manned hot air balloon flight in November 1783, but
he went down even harder two years later after a planned trip across the English Channel. See, the balloon he used in
his first untethered flight lacked the oomph to fly
from England to France. So de Roziers engineered his own balloon, which ran off both hot
air and hydrogen gas to give him that little
extra thrust he needed. Despite several attempts
to get his special balloon off the ground though, de
Roziers wasn't able to launch from Boulogne-Sur-Mer
until June 15th, 1785, when he did so with his
companion, Pierre Romain. After a successful takeoff, everything seemed to be going fine, until a sudden change
of wind pushed them back some three miles past
their starting point. What a bummer. Upon realigning and getting going in the right direction
again, de Roziers and Romain traveled a measly seven miles before the balloon spectacularly burst into flames near Wimereux. Huh? Yep. Now I can be certain, but
running a double-fuel design could have been de Roziers' downfall. See, hydrogen is extremely flammable, so there is a chance that the
hydrogen canister caught light and incinerated that balloon to a crisp. De Roziers and his companion
hurtled towards the ground from about 1,500 feet and were no more. Yikes. Talk about going out in a blaze of glory. ♪ Here, far, wherever you are ♪ Unless you spent 2023 living under a rock, you must have heard about the missing Titanic submarine saga. I'll give you a quick recap. American businessman
and co-founder and CEO of deep-sea exploration company Oceangate, Stockton Rush designed a
small submersible vessel to view the wreckage of the Titanic in. Famously anti-health and safety,
Rush went on record saying, "At some point, safety just is pure waste. If you wanna be safe, don't do anything." And boy, oh boy, did that
bite him on the bottom. He was on board the
submersible with four others on June 18th when the vessel lost contact with the surface ship MV Polar Prince. Search and rescue missions
were conducted for several days by the French, American
and Canadian governments and it became a massive
international news story. On June 22nd, the first pieces of debris were discovered over 1,500
feet from the OG Titanic. Oceangate released a statement
saying they believe Rush and the other passengers
had sadly been lost. Oof. So what happened? Well, the debris was consistent with a drop of internal pressure because the interiors of the sub couldn't stabilize the external pressure. Instead of exploding where it goes boom, it caved in on itself like
a tin can under a car tire. Ouch. That's nasty. See, Rush can poopoo health
and safety all he wants, but only if it's his own
safety he's putting at risk. When others are trusting
you with their wellbeing, you better follow that to the T. You know who is always looking
out for your best intentions? Me. That's why you should click that like and subscribe button right now and I'll keep supplying you
with these amazing videos. I've got a few coming up that
I know you're going to love. Great, let's get back to the action. Eye-full at the Eiffel. Hey, I get it, you wanna look good, but sometimes the stylish options aren't always the most practical. Well, for Austro-Hungarian
tailor Franz Reichelt, function trumped form every day. He'd become fixated on
developing a suit for aviators that could transform into a
parachute in case of emergency and safely bring them
back down to the ground. And boy, is this thing stylish. Reichelt had run a few
successful tests on his swag suit by throwing a test dummy from his fifth floor balcony in Paris. However, if he really wanted
this thing to take off, he needed a much higher
platform to test his invention. After months of contacting the Parisian Prefecture of Police asking if he could test
it from the Eiffel Tower, in 1912, they finally agreed. Except on the day of the test, Reichelt decided instead
of using the dummy he'd been testing the suit with, he'd run the test with an
even bigger dummy, himself. This wasn't in the
agreement with the police, but Reichelt went ahead and did it anyway. Well, his parachute failed
to deploy after he jumped and he careened almost 200
feet toward the ground, landing with a deadly thud. Yoinks. Reichelt became headline news and his name echoed around
France for all the wrong reasons. Now, that's not the kind
of legacy anyone dreams of. You win some, you lose some. Social media nowadays loves a hustler. You know, someone who's put in the graft and built themselves up from
the ground by their bootstraps. One of those with a keen eye for business was Henry Winstanley. He was a 17th century
English painter, engineer, and merchant who invested
the money he made from his paintings into
five merchant vessels. Sadly, life on the come up was tough and two of those ships
got savagely wrecked on Eddystone Rocks near Plymouth, England. Winstanley was enraged
nothing was being done to protect ships moving
through these dangerous waters. Rather than sit about and moan, he decided to take the initiative and set out to build the
first Eddystone Lighthouse to ensure other merchants didn't suffer the same fate he had. Construction of the large
octagonal tower began in 1696 and was completed in 1698. Winstanley was incredibly
proud of his achievement, some might say a little too proud. During the great storm of 1703, incredibly harsh weather and giant waves tore into the British coastline. In response, Winstanley
rushed to his lighthouse to make some quick repairs and deemed it structurally sound enough to withstand any onslaught
from the elements. But let's just say in the morning there was no lighthouse and no Winstanley. Oh no. (chuckles) Since Winstanley's demise, the Eddystone Lighthouse has been rebuilt and flattened over and over again. But its fourth and current iteration has been standing strong since 1881. Whew. After all these years, it sounds like they finally
nailed a winning formula. Beyond the Thunderdome. Ah, I always wish I had a cool
name when I was growing up. I tried going by Snakevenom Panther-Strike for a little while, but
it never really caught on. So when I heard about Mad Mike Hughes, I was a little curious as to how that name came about. You see, Mad Mike spent his
days as a limousine driver, but moonlighted as a
flat-earth conspiracy theorist and daredevil. Yep, he's called Mad Mike
because he was literally insane. Mike wanted to take multiple
rocket journeys into space to photograph it as a flat
disk, but without any money, he resorted to crowdfunding
the entire operation. All in all, he raised $7,875, which doesn't sound like enough money to build a safe rocket. But after a successful test
flight on March 24th, 2018, Mike returned to the ground safely after reaching speeds
of 350 miles per hour while over 1,800 feet high. Color me impressed. However, not content with just one flight, Mike decided to try another
launch in February, 2020. This one didn't go to plan. Witnesses at the scene
said they saw the rocket rubbing against the launch
apparatus before takeoff. Then once airbound, the landing parachute was
ripped from the craft. With no way to safely land, Mad Mike's furious flight
ended pretty horrifically in a smoldering wreckage on the floor. Worst of all, there
was a camera crew there to capture it all for a TV show. Man, I still can't get over
how this asinine astronaut built a working rocket with just $7,000. I'm surprised he didn't go as far as strapping himself to the outside of it. Then he'd really have
gone out with a bang. Seriously though, the homemade rocket was actually pretty impressive
despite the tragedy. NASA could have given him a job. That is if NASA is even real. No, they are real. Stop that. Super Soarer. You are mistaken if you think this video only features aspirational
high-flyers, wrong. Some of these ill-fated inventors
were actual high-flyers. Take aeronautical
innovator Otto Lilienthal. You might've heard of the Wright brothers who flew the first manned
motor-operated plane in 1903. Well, they'd have been the wrong brothers without our boy Otto's contributions. See, Otto the aviator pioneered the idea of heavier-than-air flight. By curving the top of the wing, Lilienthal created a
region of lower pressure above the wing contrasted
with a high pressure below which generated an
upward force called lift. This became a central feature of his spectacular glider designs. After performing the first
successful flight in 1891, he'd go on to conduct thousands more. However, it wasn't all easy breezy. Lilienthal's gliders were
designed to distribute weight as evenly as possible
to keep the craft stable and they could be controlled to an extent by shifting your body around to change the center of gravity. But if the glider became
pointed towards the ground, it was really difficult to
recover from that position. On August 9th, 1896, after
successful test flights where he glided for a staggering 820 feet, Lilienthal went for one more flight. This one sadly would be his last. The glider pitched forward
and began to nosedive faster than Lilienthal could recover. He crashed from around 50 feet in the air, which wasn't fatal then and there, but was enough to fracture
his cervical vertebrae. After being rushed to the hospital, Lilienthal succumbed to his injuries around 36 hours after the fateful crash. Man, what a hero. Without his work and sacrifices, you might've never got on
a plane for your vacation. So the next time you're
sitting on the runway, spare a thought for the
godfather of aviation, old Otto Lilienthal. Motorcycle Madness. Few things in life are objectively cool. Skinny jeans, planking, and
playing Dance Dance Revolution with your homies, that's it. Oh, and motorbikes, motorbikes are cool. And we've got Sylvester H.
Roper to thank for that. This American inventor specialized in automobile innovations
coming to public attention in 1863 for developing a steam carriage, one of the earliest working automobiles and the first ever motorbike,
the Velocipede in 1867. Look, it's no Harley, but
I bet back in Roper's day if you pulled up on one of these bad boys, you'd have all the 19th century ladies flashing their ankles at you. However, as I know too
well, being so darn cool all the time comes with a terrible price. On June 1st, 1896, Roper rode one of his later Velocipede models to the Charles River bike track
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After making a few laps
at a blistering pace of 40 miles per hour and
zooming past pro cyclists, Roper's bike suddenly
got a fit of the wobbles. What happened next is a bit unclear. Roper definitely came off
his bike and hit his head. However, the autopsy
showed his cause of death was a heart attack. Whether the crash caused the heart attack or the heart attack caused
the crash, we don't know. Oh, hey, I just realized, there is one other thing
that's cool though, not crashing and dying. Wear a helmet, you bozos. On the ropes. We've covered all sorts of
great and ingenious inventors, but what about the inventors
who did more harm than good? One of those was American
chemical engineer Thomas Midgley Jr. He's remembered most
for helping to develop leaded gasoline in 1921. Midgley Jr. found that by adding
tetrathyl lead to gasoline, car manufacturers could
reduce the wear and tear on internal engine components
and help them run longer. Awesome, but burning liquefied lead is devastating to the environment. Lead is a heavy metal and lasts long after the other exhaust gases like carbon monoxide have dissipated. In the ensuing decades,
measurable quantities of lead clung to American streets,
sidewalks, and walls. When it rained, all that toxic lead washed into freshwater supplies, poisoning millions of innocents and leading to its
eventual phase out in 1996. Yikes, but leaded gas wasn't the invention that spelled Midgley Jr.'s demise. He contracted polio in 1940, a horrific disease that left
him partially paralyzed. Becoming mostly bedbound, Midgley Jr. designed an
elaborate pulley system that allowed him a modicum of
mobility in his sorry state. However, one morning in 1944, he was found unfortunately
tangled in the ropes. Yikes, look, I know his flagship invention caused a huge amount of harm
and I'm not excusing that, but that's a horrible way to go. Poor guy. Small step for man. Why is it that in old
movies about the future, they thought it would all be flying cars and robot waitresses by now? I'd still struggle to do my laces. Something about a bush into
a bunny or something, right? Anyways, one man who had a solid crack at making a flying car
was Henry Smolinski. His incredible invention called the Miser fused the back part of a Cessna Skymaster and the front part of a Ford Pinto into this Chimera hybrid. Ha, I guess you'd call it a Carmera. Okay, I'll see myself out. Shockingly, Smolinski's invention was a literal piece of junk that fell apart at a gentle breeze. During a test flight on August 26th, 1973, the pilot had to make an
emergency landing in a bean field when the wing strut detached
shortly after takeoff. Hmm, sounds like a pretty
fatal design flaw, right? Well, Smolinski was
unperturbed by the events and decided to take it out
again on September 11th with no further adjustments. Once airborne, Smolinski
attempted a sharp right turn and the wing strut collapsed again. Only this time, the entire
aircraft disintegrated in midair and Smolinski, along with his business
partner, Howard Blake, never made it back to the ground alive. Sadly, our dreams of flying cars seem no closer to the present
than they did 50 years ago. What a bummer. A crushing way out. Nowadays, you can access pretty
much anything on your phone, but it wasn't always like that. Though back in the olden times, everything was printed out and one of the key figures
in making that happen was William Bullock. He was an American inventor who made significant
improvements to the rotary press, a type of large-scale
industrial printing machine. Bullock's contribution to the rotary press was designing a system that fed a continuous roll
of material into the press, meaning nobody had to stand
there feeding it all day. Neat. However, in April 1867, while making a few adjustments
to one of his new presses at the Philadelphia
Public Ledger newspaper, Bullock kicked the machine
and got his leg stuck and crushed in the process. Ouch. Now, this accident alone
wasn't enough to take his life, however, the leg contracted
gangrene and became infected. A few days later, he passed while undergoing
surgery on his gammy leg. Yikes. What a truly horrible way to go. I've never been more glad I can just read the news on my iPhone. (air whooshing) Bloody Bogdanov. When I think about it,
my life is pretty boring. I write a video, edit a video, be lauded by the hordes of loyal fans, and it's quiet, but I like it. But then I hear about people
like Alexander Bogdanov and it's hard not to compare yourself. This Russian physician, philosopher, and science fiction writer
co-founded the Bolsheviks, a revolutionary Russian political party. What a crazy life. However, Bogdanov is best remembered for being a pioneer in blood transfusions, where blood is transferred
from one patient to another. In 1924, Bogdanov embarked on
some questionable experiments. He hoped to achieve eternal youth or at least partial rejuvenation by transfusing himself with
younger people's blood, with their consent, I might add. And according to some
dubious peer reviews, he actually had some success. He claimed his eyesight
improved, his balding stopped, and his peers said he looked
seven to 10 years younger. How true you think this is is up to you, but I think there's
something fishy about it. However, in 1928, it all
came to a horrible end when Bogdanov decided to exchange blood with a student of his who he knew had malaria and tuberculosis. What exactly he hoped to
achieve with this, I'm not sure, but the student made a full recovery. Nice, that's awesome. Yeah, but sadly, Bogdanov
contracted malaria and tuberculosis from the infected blood and wasn't so lucky. Yikes, he went from 10 years
younger to six feet under. You hate to see it. Rocketman. Ever since the dawn of time, humankind has dreamed of
exploring the great yonder. It's a dream few have ever got to realize, but even fewer have achieved it quite like legendary
Chinese official Wan Hu. There's a lot of conflicting information about when he lived. Some say it was as early as 2000 BC, some say as late as the 1600s, and some say he may
have never lived at all. But if his tale is true, Wan Hu would be the
world's first astronaut. What? How? Well, the story goes Wan
built a special chair with 47 rockets attached to it. On the day of liftoff, he got dressed up and his best clothes
climbed into his best chair and had 47 servants light one rocket each before making a mad dash for cover. There was a huge explosion
that shook the ground and after the smoke had cleared, Wan and his chair were gone. Never to be seen again. Wow. Okay, so maybe Wan Hu
did make it into space on board his rocket chair contraption, but maybe he just got
blown to smithereens. What do you think? Was this a giant leap for Wan kind or did it all go up in
smoke for no reason? Let me know in the comments. Conical catastrophe. Have you ever met that person who always has opinions about things they know nothing about? Annoying, right? Well, that's exactly the kind of person British watercolor artist
Robert Cocking was. Despite his somewhat
successful painting career, Cocking was always fancying himself as a kind of amateur scientist and he was very, very amateur. Despite having no scientific
qualifications whatsoever, Cocking caught wind of
the first parachute jump in England in 1802 and felt
like he could do better. So he spent the next few years of his life redesigning a new conical-shaped parachute 107 feet in circumference. Once his passion project
prototype was finished, he contacted two friends
who owned a hot air balloon to help him test his masterpiece out. On June 24th, 1867, despite
being a whopping 61 years old and again, having no formal
qualifications in science, Cocking rode up, suspended
beneath the balloon. At 5,000 feet, he deployed, but the cone-shaped parachute inverted, causing Cocking to plummet
towards the ground. Cocking's not-so-clever
design completely fell apart 200 to 300 feet above the ground and he didn't survive the impact. See, cocky Cocking here
had forgotten to consider the weight of the parachute when performing his calculations. Therefore, he was considerably heavier than he'd anticipated. What a fool. Let that be a reminder to you, leave the smart stuff to the smart people. Now, go play with your crayons. Wheely Bad Idea. Ah, to be young and full of life again. My youth is now sadly a distant memory. However, one budding young
inventor called William Nelson suffered an incredibly tragic
fate that cut his life short. At just 24 years of
age, Nelson was working for General Electric in
Schenectady, New York, where he was viewed as an upcoming talent with a great deal of promise. However, on October 3rd, 1903, Nelson took his latest and
potentially greatest invention out for a new spin. It was a prototype motorized bicycle that he wheeled to the top of a hill opposite the home of his father-in-law. Now, I'm not sure exactly what
happened to our boy, Willie, but he got on the bike
and flew down the hill at rapid speed. Whether he lost control
and collided with a tree or simply fell off and bonked
his head, it's not clear. What we do know is that he
had an accident halfway down and when he reached
the bottom of the hill, Willie was no more. Geez, that's heartbreaking. Burning Bronze. Believe me, I've worked for
some maniacal narcissist in my time. Some people just aren't nice leaders, and that's definitely true
for Phalaras the Tyrant. He ruled over Akragas
in Sicily around 570 BC and had quite the reputation for his excessively cruel punishments. I can't give you all the grisly details about how to upsetting my
tyrants here at YouTube. However, there was one
punishment called the brazen bull that ended up working against him. One of Phalaras' devoted
employees proposed the sick idea of a life-sized bull made of bronze that was hollow on the inside. Phalaras could load his
enemies inside the bull, set a fire beneath it and
make his enemies go bye-bye. Yikes, that sounds horrible. Phalaras loved the idea, but decided to add some
extra cruel details like making smoke bellow from the nose in clouds of spicy incense. Wow, this guy's a real piece of work. Well, what goes around comes around. According to the legend, when Akragas was overthrown
by Telemachus in 554 BC, Phalaras got a taste of his own medicine. Telemachus put Phalaras inside the bull and that was the end of him. Nice. Karma can be a cruel
mistress in paying its dues and this evil ruler was long overdue. And just like that, we've
reached the end of the video. What a ride. It's crazy to think all the sacrifices that went into so many crazy inventions. Which of those catastrophic
calamities was your favorite? Let me know down in the
comments and until next time, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)
