With this in mind, I would like to tell you the story of perhaps one of the worst scientists to have ever lived. Thomas Midgley Jr. was an ivy league graduate (thanks, Cornell) and mechanical engineer who, despite his training in that specific area, chose to focus in commercial applications of chemistry.

Photo credit: chemcases.com

Five years after graduating from school in 1911, Midgley began work at Dayton Metal Laboratories (sometimes referred to as Dayton Research Laboratories), which was absorbed by General Motors and turned into one of its primary research facilities. Along with his mentor, he had discovered that a combination of lead and sodium when added to chloroethane like so…

4 NaPb + 4 CH₃CH₂Cl –> (CH₃CH₂)₄Pb + 4 NaCl + 3 Pb

…when added to standard gasoline would reduce a phenomenon known as engine knock which was apparently plaguing early motorists.

(My apologies for the chemistry.)

The additive is known as tetra-ethyl lead, sometimes referred to as TEL. It’s what years ago made gasoline “leaded.” Most people know that leaded fuel is bad, but not exactly to what degree. Midgley himeslf in 1923 had to stop all work in his lab and spend some time in Miami for some R&R due to severe lung issues associated with the dangers of working with lead. FYI, here are the effects of lead poisoning according to Wikipedia:

• Excess lethargy, abdominal pain, ^[11] headache.
• Gastrointestinal problems, such as constipation, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, poor appetite, or weight loss, which are common in acute poisoning.
• Neuropathy, such as muscle pain, weakness, tremors, twitches, spasms, or cramps.
• Encephalopathy, which, in extreme circumstances, is characterised by raised intracranial pressure, seizures, comas, or even death.
• Nephropathy, which occurs because the kidneys are the main route of removal of lead from the body. Acute lead poisoning may lead to development of Fanconi syndrome. Chronic lead exposure can lead to a slowly progressive interstitial nephritis. Chronic interstitial nephritis can also develop following an earlier acute lead exposure. Long-term exposure at levels lower than those that cause lead nephropathy have also been reported as nephrotoxic in patients from developed countries that had chronic kidney disease or were at-risk because of hypertension or diabetes mellitus. ^[16]
• Behavioural changes, such as inability to concentrate, hyperactivity, irritability, aggressiveness, mood swings, or insomnia.
• Cognitive problems, such as memory loss.
• Other associated effects, such as metal taste in the mouth, chest pain, anemia, impotence, and other reproductive problems.

An advertisement for Ethyl which appeared in the March, 1932 issue of Better Homes and Gardens. Click to enlarge.

The dangers of working with lead made the entire manufacturing process outrageously hazardous. By 1924, General Motors, Standard Oil (which today is more or less ExxonMobil), and DuPont had created the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation to sell leaded gasoline. Ten factory employees would die of lead poisoning between 1923 and 1924.

Ethyl Corporation headquarters in Virginia (via Flickr)

The company built a new factory in New Jersey (surprise!), but within two months five more employees suffered terrible lead-related brain injuries and eventually death. Remarkably, the company responded to this by stating things along the lines of, “These men went insane because they worked too hard.”

All of these deaths were not great PR for the company or for Midgley, so in a press conference, he poured the straight stuff, TEL, over his hands and then breathed it in for one minute, claiming he could do it every day without harm.

The State of New Jersey shut down the factory several days later and banned the production of TEL without permission by the state.

Midgley required one year of recovery from the publicity stunt.

Leaded gasoline is one of the most significant contributors to atmospheric lead and today, Americans have over 600 times more lead in their blood than those who lived prior to TEL’s introduction. It was banned in the US in 1986, though somehow is still used overseas even today.

Remarkably, Midgley had been made vice president of the Ethyl Corporation since its formation. He was relieved of this position, but remained a GM employee.

His story does not end here though.

In the 1930s, refrigeration technologies were not that great. In fact, refrigerators often used a toxic and combustible combination of gases that had an unfortunate tendency of killing or otherwise severely injuring unsuspecting users. From 1919 to 1980, General Motors also owned Frigidaire, the appliance brand. After the TEL debacle, GM charged Midgley with discovering a safe chemical for use in Frigidaire refrigerators and freezers.

Along with his mentor from Dayton Research who worked with him on TEL, Charles Kettering (the same Kettering of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York), the two set to work on what was to become dichlorodifluoromethane. I’ll space that out for you so you can actually read that: di chloro di fluoro methane. Because chemistry is just full of really long naming protocols, the duo gave the compound the name … Freon, the first chlorinated fluorocarbon, or CFC.

That’s right, the same guy who came up with leaded gasoline also created CFCs, you know, those things that are supposed to be destroying the ozone layer and all that. Talk about the sequel being better than the original. CFCs were banned in the US 64 years after they were developed, in 1994, but given their chemical properties will likely still remain in the atmosphere for quite a number of decades.

For having improved the quality of life so much, Midgley was the recipient of a number of prestigious accolades, including the Priestly Medal, the highest honor from the American Chemical Society, two honorary degrees, induction into the National Academy of Sciences. In 1944, he was named president of the American Chemical Society.

While Midglely was probably not completely aware of the destruction that his creations would wreak upon the earth, his life would end in a glorious amount of karmic irony.

He contracted highly disabling polio at the age of 51 in 1940. Being an inventive sort, Midgley built a rigging of pulleys and ropes which would raise and turn him over in his bed. On November 2, 1944 while trying to use the contraption, he had become entangled in the ropes and was strangled to death.

I think that story wraps itself up quite nicely. It was condensed in a video made for the Live Earth concert events in 2007 in this video:

Relieving stress in the office

A series of stupid stunts

Andrew Zimmern. Enough said. (Possibly NSFW)

And a general round-up of stupid to last at least a week

Gaurab Chakrabarti is rational.

As can be seen, there isn't a whole lot going on here.

While drilling, the team discovered a large cavern full of natural gas. Drilling into the area led the ground on which the drilling equipment sat to collapse, leaving a crater between 50 and 100 meters in size.

Let’s say you were responsible for this accident. Would you:

a) Engineer a secure covering of the hole, similar to Chernobyl’s sarcophagus.
b) Just leave, there’s nobody in that area anyway.
c) Eliminate the threat of disaster by lighting the gas on fire.

Any guesses? Turns out the correct response is “C.” Not knowing how much gas was in the cavern, it was nonetheless decided to simply ignite it all and in turn, prevent any hazard from spreading.

Usually when chemicals explode, you might see something like this happen:

That didn’t really happen in Derweze, or Darvaza as it is somtimes referred. Instead, the gasses just … kept burning. In fact, nearly 40 years later, the hole is still burning and has received the moniker of “The Gates of Hell.” It’s somewhat of an apt title, since the scene now looks like this:

In still frames, it’s actually quite beautiful:

(Photo Credit: John H. Bradley)

Let’s say you’re an astronaut and things aren’t going your way. You and 7 others on the space shuttle are in imminent danger and you gotta get out of there. (… and by “there,” I mean still within the Earth’s atmosphere.) How would you do it?

Believe it or not there are two necessarily outrageous ways for astronauts to ditch their craft and head back to solid ground.

The first case happens if something goes awry while you’re still on the launch pad. How would you get from inside the shuttle to the ground, far enough away so that you don’t get blown into bite-sized chunks by the millions of pounds of rocket fuel surrounding you? Go ahead. Take 30 seconds and guess. Unless you already know, you’re not going to figure out how NASA does it.

• First, you need to unhook yourself from the 80+ pounds of stuff that’s in your spacesuit and head for the exit hatch.
• Next, run out onto the platform you walked into the shuttle on (You can see it in the picture above)
• There’s an elevator you took to bring you to the level you’re at. Walk behind it.
• You’ll see a number of large wicker baskets with their rims at floor level. These baskets are attached to a steel cable which runs from the platform you’re on (189 feet in the air) diagonally to the ground. It isn’t the world’s biggest zip line (that’s in Sun City, South Africa), but it might be the most expensive.
• Get into one of those baskets. Oh, and make sure you get in backwards.
• Pull the release cord and travel really fast into a pre-assembled pile of sandbags to cushion your fall.
• The basket should actually fly through a carefully placed opening in the sandbags, leaving you next to a very armored bunker.
• Get inside and close the door so you don’t get hit by flaming pieces of space shuttle.
• Now you have two options. You can wait in the bunker, or…
• …In case of emergencies, NASA keeps four M113 Armored Personnel Carriers from the 1960s at the back entrance of the bunker. They are purposely fully-fueled with their engines running and keys in the ignition so that fleeing astronauts can just hop in and get out of there if they need to. They look like this:
• There are no drivers waiting for you in those vehicles. Grab the controls and put the pedal to the floor…if you know how.

NASA has this whole procedure set up and ready to go with every space shuttle launch. There’s actually some video of this procedure being executed in a training exercise here.

There’s another scenario that may require a bailout. If for whatever reason you’re in the shuttle and can’t land, you and your crew still have an escape. Are there ejection seats? Maybe a secure escape pod like in Air Force One (the movie)? Nah. That’s too simple.

Luckily, on board with you is ICES, or the Inflight Crew Escape System. Fancy name, not so fancy otherwise. Basically, it’s a system that coordinates blowing out an exit panel so you can leave through it. And by “leave,” I mean hooking yourself up to an 8.75 foot long pole that sticks out the side of the shuttle, then letting go of it and falling 10,000 feet to safety at 230 miles an hour.

The pole actually serves a relatively important purpose. When you’re flying as fast as you are up there, it’s critical that when you jump out that you head in the right direction. The reason astronauts are strapped to the pole as they fall down it is to make sure that fall in that right direction.

As all this is going on, the shuttle is actually flying itself to make sure the craft stays level for the 90 seconds it takes for everyone to bail. I’m summarizing the procedure to a ridiculous extent — you can read the full official procedure from NASA (it’s long and detailed = boring) right here.

Bonus!

For one reason or another, the danger surrounding Niagara Falls is attractive to daredevils. Perhaps one of the more memorable events to occur on the falls took place in 1990 and starred David Copperfield:

(The entire special can be viewed here.)

Obviously this clip was just one part of a multimillion dollar primteimte TV special.

Now get this. Fast forward to October 1st, 1995.  A wannabe stuntman by the name of Robert Overcracker tries to hit two birds with one stone. As a way to catapult himself into the stunt industry as well as raise money for the homeless, Mr. Overcracker arranged a stunt where he would ride a jetski off of the falls and safely land via a rocket-propelled parachute.

This, of course is not a particularly smart idea. As it turned out, that rocket powered parachute failed to open, sending Mr. Overcracker over the edge, his body never to be recovered, and raised more awareness for parachutes than for the homeless.

Miraculously, an Egyptian tourist snapped this incredible photo of the events:

Interestingly enough, Mr. Overcracker could have qualified for life insurance payout as a result of this ridiculous stunt too! I’m not sure whther or not he actually received anything, but hot damn, what a way to go.