9 Inventors Who Were Killed By Their Creations
I've created a monster.
Being an inventor is a dangerous job, you're usually messing around with hitherto untested technology that could blow up in your face at any moment.
What with all of the unknowns, it's pretty difficult for inventors to find any willing members of the public to test them on, meaning that they more often than not will have to be their own guinea pigs, sometimes with disastrous consequences.
Even if you survive the experimental phase, you're not out of the woods yet. There's always the very real a present danger that your creations could turn on you, leaving you hoisted by your own petard, as it were.
So, if you're planning on becoming an inventor, but don't fancy the mortality rate, make sure that you only ever invent things like "The Fluffy Safety Machine" rather than anything explode-y or weapon-y.
9. Alexander Bogdanov
Alexander Bogdanov, a co-founder of the Bolshevik party was so obsessed with discovering the secret of eternal youth that it eventually killed him.
When he was kicked out of the party that he helped found, he turned his attention to science, nature and the pursuit of the elixir of life. In the 1920s, he began to experiment with blood transfusions, believing them to have powerful rejuvenating properties and he even managed to convince Stalin to create the Institute of Blood Transfusion to study them.
After an impressive 11 blood transfusions, Bogdanov claimed that his failing eyesight had been restored and that his balding had been "suspended". There is little scientific evidence to support any of his claims and most people think that it was probably either a placebo effect, wishful thinking or even outright lies.
However, Bogdanov met his end when he took the blood of a student who was infected with malaria and tuberculosis (they weren't big on background checks in those days) and he either contracted the diseases himself or died due to tissue rejection.
The student, however, made a full recovery.