From inventors killed by their own inventions to a pervert scientist, you’ll see that, sometimes, the human being forgets their brain at home. Have a look at top 10 most stupid ideas of all time.
1. Johann Ritter, a German physicist, made a self-experiment applying poles of a voltaic pile to his own hands, eyes, ears, nose, tongue… And penis. After realizing that it caused orgasms, he got so addicted. This caused some health problems, which made Ritter self-medicate with opium. His health was so weak that he died of tuberculosis at 33 years old.
What are the stupidest ideas ever?
2. In 1973 the traffic wasn’t even as chaotic as it is today, but the engineer Henry Smolinski decided to design a flying car using the rear end of an airplane and a Ford Pinto. During a flight test, Smolinski died, when the wing strut detached from the car.
3. The doctor Stubbins Ffirth wanted to prove that the yellow fever wasn’t a contagious disease (it is). To prove his point, he exposed himself to the disease, drinking vomit, urine and blood from patients with yellow fever. Still healthy, Ffirth considered his theory proven. What he didn’t know, is that the transmission is usually by a mosquito… And he drank all that pee for nothing.
4. French tailor Franz Reichelt wanted to fly. So he made a parachute suit. In 1912, he decided to test the suit himself… By jumping off the lower level of the Eiffel Tower, a 187 foot fall that killed him instantly. You can even find a video of the fall on internet.
5. Its impossible to tell if this is real or not, but this is a very popular story. Chinese Wan Hu chased his dream of being an astronaut. But this was during the 1500’s, the only way was to strap 47 gunpowder rockets, into a chair and called his 47 servants to light each fuse. Seconds after, was a bang, that didn’t even leave a trail of Wan and his chair.
6. In 1896, William Crush believed it would be a great idea to demonstrate a train wreck to get the attention and make the trip from Missouri to Texas more popular. 50 thousand people attended to the spectacle. But things went wrong when the boilers exploded and iron and steel flew everywhere. 3 people died and many got injured.
7. In 1962, three men from the University of Oklahoma decided to give LSD to an elephant, just to know what would happen. But they gave a dose 3,000x than the dose a human should take. The animal went into convulsions. To reverse the effect, they tried to administrate more drugs. The animal died almost 2 hours after… For nothing.
8. In 1903, 24 year old William Nelson worked for General Electric in New York. With a bright future ahead, he created a motorized bicycle. He died when he fell off a hill, when he took the bicycle for the first test.
9. It was 1950, during the Cold War. CIA agent Frank Wisner tried to convince the government to send, among with the baskets of humanitarian aid, packets extra-large condoms labeled as “small” or “medium”. The idea was to convince the communists that American men had huge dongs.
10. In 2009, a photoshoot involving a Boeing 747 and a fighter jet flying at a low altitude caused panic in Manhattan. Workers and residents were terrified. And not even the New York City Mayor knew about it! The president Barack Obama said “it won’t happen again”.
