Inventors Who Maybe Should’ve Read The Manual Of Their Own Invention That Ended Up Killing Them

Abu Nasr Ismail ibn Hammad a-Jawhari

Flickr / Seth Anderson

Abu Nasr was a Muslim cleric around 1000 AD at Nishapur (which is now modern day Iraq). He was a bit of an inventor as well which would ultimately lead to his awful death. He was fascinated with flight ( it’s almost like you’ve heard this before) so he built a pair of feather-covered wooden wings.

To impress an Iman, he jumped off of the roof of the mosque, hoping that he would soar like a bird. Well, the wings obviously didn’t work. He fell to the ground and died instantly. They said this was the first attempt at human flight and to commemorate that, they built a mosaic mural on the wall of the mosque.