1944AC: Inventor and chemist Thomas Midgley, Jr. accidentally strangled himself with the cord of a pulley-operated mechanical bed of his own design.
Turns out Thomas Midgley, Jr. also invented CFCs but didn’t live long enough to learn what they’d done to the ozone layer.
260AC: Roman emperor Valerian, after being defeated in battle and captured by the Persians, was used as a footstool by the King Shapur I. After a long period of punishment and humiliation, he offered Shapur a huge ransom for his release. In reply, Shapur had the unfortunate emperor skinned alive and his skin stuffed with straw or dung and preserved as a trophy. Only after the Sassanid dynasty’s defeat in their last war with Rome three and a half centuries later was his skin given a cremation and burial.
More inventors killed by their own inventions and more unusual deaths via wikipedia.
The killer idea, death by invention
Turns out Thomas Midgley, Jr. also invented CFCs but didn’t live long enough to learn what they’d done to the ozone layer.
More inventors killed by their own inventions and more unusual deaths via wikipedia.