8 Inventors Killed by Their Own Inventions

Here we take a look at eight inventors killed by their own inventions.

An Austrian tailor, he died testing his parachute design by jumping off the Eiffel Tower in 1912.

Popularized jogging with his 1977 book, The Complete Book of Running, but died of a heart attack while jogging in 1984.

A stuntman, he survived going over Niagara Falls in a barrel but died in 1985 during a failed stunt at the Houston Astrodome.

The architect of the Titanic, he died onboard when the ship sank in 1912.

An engineer who built a flying car, he died in 1973 during a test flight when the car’s parts separated mid-air.

He founded a company that made radium-laced glow-in-the-dark watch dials and died from radiation exposure in 1928.

After inventing leaded gasoline and CFCs, he died in 1944 when he got entangled in a device he invented to help him get out of bed.

A naval inventor who designed the HMS Captain, he died in 1870 when the unstable ship capsized in a storm.