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Inventors killed by their own inventions
- impostervt 10y agoHow do you know if a developer is a Senior developer? When they screw up, it takes a LONG time to figure out what went wrong.
- jihadjihad 10y agoThe article on the brazen bull (link in wiki article) is simultaneously one of the most entertaining and most horrific articles I've ever come across on Wikipedia
- JabavuAdams 10y agoNo school like the old school. Every so often when I'm dismayed by our savagery, it's uplifting to look back and realise that we are making progress.
- ceejayoz 10y agoMaybe, maybe not. Now instead of roasting people alive we just put them in solitary for years at a time and destroy their minds as a result.
- stephancoral 10y agoWe still roast people alive using the electric chair
- stephancoral 10y agoIn Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia they literally can fry a man to death using Victorian-era electric technology. But sure, we are making progress.
- knz 10y agoI was going to make a comment about the context of this being Europe but then remembered the current state of the Middle East/cradle of civilization!
- StavrosK 10y agoThe "five punishments" article is weird. At 200 crimes, you got punished by execution, but at 1,000 crimes, you got the number of your crimes tattooed on your face. It's like supermarket loyalty points, except they make more sense.
- tass 10y agoThe '200 crimes' refers to the number of different crimes which carried this punishment, not the number committed before receiving the punishment.
- StavrosK 10y agoAh, that makes sense, thanks. I was kinda wondering how many people they got committing 1,000 crimes in a row. I figured maybe they criminalized "stepping on an ant" or something.
- StavrosK 10y agoI can never figure out people's motivations in ancient texts. The brazen bull article goes like this: King: Design me a bull that I can roast people in and that will smell of incense and make people's screams sound like a bull's roaring. Inventor: Lo, I have designed precisely such a beast: the bellowings of the roasted man are converted into melodious roars. King: Fuck me that's disgusting. Put him in the bull and roast him, I kinda want to hear. I guess I browse /r/watchpeopledie too much. Inventor: Alas, I'm burning! King: Wait wait, take him out before he dies. I'm gonna put in the extra 10% and throw him off a cliff instead. NO sense.
- empath75 10y agoThe original source seems to be here: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/9*.html#18 http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_S... Keep in mind that this was written several centuries after the fact, and the author seemed to be telling the story to make the following point: > For, in general, those who plan an evil thing aimed at others are usually snared in their own devices. Ancient historians rarely made truth a priority when telling stories like these.
- StavrosK 10y agoThat makes sense, thanks.
- agentgt 10y agoOn the other hand the inventor of Vaseline aka petroleum jelly claimed that his invention allowed him to live to 96 [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Chesebrough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Chesebrough
- MBCook 10y agoYou wouldn't happen to be Sawbones listener would you?
- agentgt 10y agoNope... I have been meaning to get into Stitcher or whatever is in vogue these days for listening to NPR style radio but just haven't.
- MBCook 10y agoIt's a podcast about medial history (mostly how horribly wrong and weird our theories were) that I enjoy quite a bit, and they had an entire episode on the invention, sale, and medical uses of petroleum jelly just a week or two ago.
- agentgt 10y agoI have some doubts about vaseline as well as zinc oxide (I just had a son so I'm changing diapers frequently). On the one hand you want a barrier on the other hand you want skin to breath (it is a similar problem with rain jackets made of synthetics). There is probably a better thing then Vaseline but I guess its good enough.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- logronoide 10y agoNo Computer Science representatives here... yet.
- StavrosK 10y ago"The inventor of the infinite loop died of starvation when, while testing his invention, said 'I'm coming to dinner in a minute, I'm just waiting for this loop to end'."
- roryisok 10y agosome day Object reference not set to instance of an object is going to drive me to kill myself.
- HeyLaughingBoy 10y agoOh god, tracking one down right now and tearing my hair out...
- maskedinvader 10y agostory of my life !
- logfromblammo 10y agoI'll put $1 on the "drone-AI programmer killed in autonomous airstrike" square. And another one on "Boston Dynamics employee crushed by falling pack mule robot".
- lloyddobbler 10y agoOne of the true gems of Wikipedia. As a Denver resident, I couldn't help but think of Blucifer - our Demon Mustang of the Denver airport that killed its creator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Mustang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Mustang