Thomas Midgley Jr.
Thomas Midgley Jr. was a Pennsylvania-based mechanical engineer who’s most well-known as the guy who developed the “lead” used in leaded gasoline. He’s been called “the most harmful inventor in history” a forefather for today’s climate-changed hellscape, and just a… well, not that great a guy, environmentally speaking. And while leaded gas would be a mass public health danger until it was formally banned for on-road usage in 1996, that gas wasn’t what killed ol’ Midge. Instead, according to a Time Magazine obit from November 13th, 1944, Midgely ended up accidentally strangling himself on a harness he’d devised to get out of bed after he’d contracted polio years before.
