The Deadliest Man in History
The tragic and ironic story of Thomas Midgley Jr., the inventor who accidentally poisoned the planet and met his end by his own creation.
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The tragic and ironic story of Thomas Midgley Jr., the inventor who accidentally poisoned the planet and met his end by his own creation.
Full transcript of The Deadliest Man in History
One single man harmed the Earth more than any asteroid. In 1921, Thomas Midgley added lethal lead to gasoline. He knew it was poison, secretly suffering from lead exposure himself. Still, he washed his hands in it on live TV to lie. Soon, invisible toxic dust settled into the bones of every child. Next, he invented CFCs, tearing a hole in our ozone. Decades later, polio left him completely paralyzed. He built a complex pulley system to lift his own body. It tangled. The man who poisoned the world was strangled by his own invention.