(Roughly) Daily

… or dead. Consider…

Ismail ibn Hammad al-Jawhari (died c. 1003–1010), a Kazakh Turkic scholar from Farab, attempted to fly using two wooden wings and a rope. He leapt from the roof of a mosque in Nishapur and fell to his death…

Andrei Zheleznyakov, a Soviet scientist, was developing chemical weapons in 1987 when a hood malfunction exposed him to traces of the nerve agent Novichok 5. He spent weeks in a coma, months unable to walk, and years suffering failing health before dying from its effects in 1992/3…

Cowper Phipps Coles (1819-1870) was a Royal Navy captain who drowned with approximately 480 others in the sinking of HMS Captain, a masted turret ship of his own design…

Thomas Midgley, Jr. (1889–1944) was an American engineer and chemist who contracted polio at age 51, leaving him severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to help others lift him from bed. He became accidentally entangled in the ropes and died of strangulation at the age of 55. However, he is better known for two of his other inventions: the tetraethyl lead (TEL) additive to gasoline, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) [as we’ve noted in (Roughly) Daily before]…

Just a few of the entries in Wikipedia’s “List of inventors killed by their own invention.”

* Swami Vivekananda

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As we practice prudence, we might spare a thought for F. Sherwood Rowland; he died on this date in 2012. A chemist who focused on atmospheric chemistry, he is best remembered as the man who “outed” Thomas Midgley– that’s to say, for his discovery that chlorofluorocarbons contribute to ozone depletion– for which he shared 1995 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

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