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If I were one to post to TIL on reddit, I would have posted about this yesterday:
Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA “The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History[SIC]”
It’s why I went looking for the source of a quote.
The video was about Thomas Midgely Jr, whom Wikipedia summarizes well:
Thomas Midgley Jr. (May 18, 1889 – November 2, 1944) was an American mechanical and chemical engineer. He played a major role in developing leaded gasoline (tetraethyl lead) and some of the first chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), better known in the United States by the brand name Freon; both products were later banned from common use due to their harmful impact on human health and the environment. He was granted more than 100 patents over the course of his career.[2] He contracted polio in 1940. In 1944 he was found strangled by a device he devised to allow him to get out of bed unassisted at his home in Worthington, Ohio. At the time, it was declared a suicide. Today, many report he was accidentally killed by his own invention.
Leaded Gasoline
Clair Patterson - experiments for determining the age of the earth required measuring lead in samples, but samples were contaminated due to gasoline use.
Kettering - self-starting car (no hand crank)
Thomas Midgely, Jr., hired by Kettering, added Lead to gasoline because Ethanol was too expensive.
updated: 2023-02-12 12:11:27
generated: 2024-02-03