This is a list of inventors who have been killed by inventions they designed or were involved in The Punishment of Haman , by Michaelangelo . This is a list of inventors who have been killed by inventions they designed or were involved in. Haman . In the Book of Esther , (2nd century BC) Haman is hanged from the gallows he invented. Wan Hu . A minor officer in Ming Dynasty who was trying to launch himself into space using a rocket. William Bullock , Born 1813, died 1867, Bullock had his foot crushed while trying to repair a rotary printing press that he had invented. The resulting infection would later prove fatal. Otto Lilienthal died August 10 , 1896 from injuries sustained two days earlier in a crash of one of his hang gliders . Thomas Midgley, Jr. accidentally strangled himself with the cord of a pulley-operated mechanical bed of his own design in 1944. Alexander Bogdanov , a physician and scientist, conducted an experiment for a "rejuvenation" technique wherein he deliberately gave himself a transfusion of blood from a student who suffered from malaria and tuberculosis. He died of the subsequent infection.