They Sacrificed Themselves: Inventors Who Lost Their Lives Trying to Make the World a Better Place

We owe a lot to scientists and inventors who worked day and night to take humanity one step forward and lost their lives while realizing their inventions.

1.Horace Hunley

Hunley, who we can remember as the inventor of early submarines, has carried out a lot of work in this field. Years later, important techniques were developed using his methods, but he died after an accident during a submarine exploration drive…

2. Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier

Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, the world’s first ‘ballooner’, lost his life in an accident while using one of the Rozière balloons that bear his name and will make life easier in the coming years.

3. Sylvester H. Roper

Roper may not be used today, but he is the inventor of the steam-powered bicycle. While creating these bicycles, he suffers a heart attack and has an accident during the experiment phase. This accident cost him his life, but there is a question mark, which is this: It is not known whether his heart attack caused the accident or his accident triggered the heart attack.

4. William Bullock

The inventor, born in 1813, is remembered even today for his work on printing machines. Unfortunately, these machines were the way he said goodbye to life; he lost his life because one of the printing machines he produced fell on him during assembly.

5. Otto Lilienthal

The flight experiments carried out by Otto Lilienthal, who is considered the father of glider technology and therefore aircraft technology, were pioneers for the Wright Brothers. He worked so devotedly for his dreams and for the benefit of humanity that Lilienthal crashed to the ground and lost his life while performing test flights with the glider he invented.

6. Franz Reichelt

Another inventor who searches for his inventions in the skies is Reicheit. During the years when he was experimenting with the fabric parachute he manufactured, he planned to jump from the top of the Eiffel Tower, hoping for a demonstration. A glitch he experienced while carrying out this plan caused him to crash to the ground from a height of tens of meters.

7. Marie Curie

You know Marie Curie, she was the scientist who discovered Radium and Polonium. Curie died of aplastic anemia as a negative consequence of this successful scientific life.

This disease occurs after long-term exposure to radiation, and no one knew this at the time.

8. Alexander Bogdanov

Russian scientist Bogdanov was looking for a method to stay young indefinitely through blood transfusion. For this purpose, he injected the blood of one of his students into his own body, but died as a result of complications.

The cause of the incident was later understood to be that this blood was either malaria or belonged to a different blood group.

9. Henry Smolinski

Smolinski brought a futuristic design to life. He died in an accident while trying out the flying car model he designed with wings added to a Ford model, which he called AVE Mizar.

For those wondering about AVE Mizar, this is what the airplane-car looked like.

10. Fred Duesenberg

Duesenberg was an automobile manufacturer competing with the world. He died in 1932 after an unfortunate accident while driving a car named Duesenberg, which was his own company.

11. Thomas Midgley Jr.

Midgley, who is not well remembered in the history of science, invented leaded gasoline. Since lead was cheap in those years, this substance was used in many places, especially in automobiles. In those years, hundreds of workers lost their lives in some factories just because of the use of this substance.

Behind this curse, he died of suffocation when the ropes of the mechanical bed he invented wrapped around his neck.

12. Winstanley, who designed the first modern lighthouse, did not leave the tower during a storm to test its durability. The tower, which collapsed in the storm, also became his grave.