(ORDO NEWS) — The history of mankind is full of brilliant minds promoting progress and thereby developing civilization. Not all of them, however, survived to the moment when their works gained real popularity, and some happened to go to the next world thanks to their own inventions. Irony can be deadly – in the truest sense of the word.
1. Henry Smolinski and AVE Mizar
Henry Smolinski wanted to create a flying car – and, in general, he created it. Together with partner Gal Blake, he crafted the AVE Mizar, attaching fenders from a Cessna Skymaster airplane to a Ford Pinto. Both inventors died during a test flight due to a falling wing in 1973.
2. Aurel Vlaicu and the plane Vlaicu II
Aurel Vlaicu (1882-1913) – Romanian aviation pioneer, inventor and test pilot. For his plane Vlaiku II, he received a large cash prize at an aviation competition near Vienna in 1912, but a year later he crashed on it in an unsuccessful attempt to cross the Carpathians.
3. Valerian Abakovsky and the air car
Abakovsky (1895-1921) designed a motor railcar with an aircraft propeller – a promising and very fast vehicle. In 1921, the air car was successfully tested on the section of the Moscow-Tula railway, but on the way back it went off the rails and crashed.
4. Frederick Duesenberg and the Marvel car
Frederick Duesenberg (1876-1932), American designer, together with his brother August specialized first in conventional cars, then in racing. Their cars were extremely popular and of high quality. Despite this, Frederick crashed his own car in 1932 and died in hospital.
5. Thomas Andrews and the Titanic
Part of the blame for the catastrophe that befell the Titanic lies on the shoulders of its creators. Thomas Andrews was the ship’s lead designer and chief executive officer of Harland & Wolff. In a collision with an iceberg, he was the first to sensibly assess the damage and say that the ship would sink, and soon died, helping to save other passengers.
6. Francis Edgar Stanley and the Stanley Steamer
Francis Edgar Stanley (1849-1918), inspired by steam trains, designed the Stanley Steamer steam car in 1897. The car drove at an astounding speed of 43 km / h for those times. In 1918, the inventor died at the wheel of his brainchild. Trying to avoid collision with the cart, Stanley drove into a raspberry at full speed.
7. Michael Dacre and Jetpod
Michael Dacre, who died in 2009, tried to create a “flying taxi” – a compact and comfortable vehicle that can relieve traffic in large cities. But at the very first test, problems arose during takeoff, and then the car that had taken off into the air crashed from a 200-meter height together with its inventor.
8. Max Valier and the rocket engines
Max Valier (1895-1930), an Austrian engineer and pilot, dreamed of drawing the world’s attention to the new rocketry at that time. To do this, he attached rocket motors not only to airplanes, but also to cars. On May 17, 1930, at a test bench in Berlin, the alcohol fuel in the rocket exploded, and shrapnel killed Valle on the spot. The Bolzano Institute of Technology and one of the lunar craters are named after Valle.
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