Leaving a Mark

My crack research department, Pat, has sent me several stories lately that would each make pretty good columns, if I were the Huffington Post. Fortunately for you, I’m not the Huffington Post. That’s fortunate for me, too, because I’d hate to live in Huffington.

But I mention HuffPost because one of the stories Pat sent me, which was written by Lee Moran and published by HuffPost, was entitled ‘Cat Endures 8-Mile Ride Stuck In Car Bumper, Walks Away Like It’s NBD.’ For those of you who are wondering (And yes, some are wondering. They send me letters.) NBD stands for No Big Deal. Either that or Noogie’s Bad Day. Or Ned Bundy’s Dodge. Or something.

All I can say is that it must have been a really slow news day at HuffPost, for them to run this story. The article made it sound like this cat, whose name is Gnocchi (how sad) is some kind of hero, for surviving 8 miles in a car bumper. Lee used adjectives like ‘terrifying’ and ‘harrowing’ and ‘journey’ and ‘amazing.’

What really happened is that a neighbor’s cat crawled into the bumper of a woman’s car, and she drove off without knowing it. Big deal. This happens pretty much every day, probably hundreds of times a day. This should give you some idea of the kind of ‘journalism’ offered by HuffPost.

But I’m going to give HuffPost a break, because one of the other stories Pat sent me, also from HuffPost and written by Garry Rodgers, was a lot better. It’s called ‘Top Twenty Inventors Killed by Their Inventions,’ which has a lot more pizzazz than the other one, on account of people being killed, and all. And no cats.

These people who invented things and then killed themselves with them are also appealing because most of them died outdoors, such as Thomas Andrews, who was the head guy in charge of the design of the Titanic. Thomas went along on the maiden voyage, which, as you know if you’re smarter than linoleum, was also its final voyage.

 In Thomas’s defense, he pushed for a double hull and a lot more lifeboats, but he was vetoed because the financiers were tightwads. Otherwise Thomas, and a lot of other folks, might not have ended up going down with the ship.

Jean-Francoise Pilatre de Rozier, besides having an unpronounceable name, also invented the hot air balloon, and made the first flight in one in 1783. A couple of years later he and another fellow tried to balloon across the English Channel in one of his inventions, but it crashed. Bummer.

 Francis Edgar Stanley was the inventor of the famed photographic dry plate, which he sold to George Eastman, who made cameras with it. But Francis also invented a line of cars that ran on steam, which he called Stanley Steamers, for some reason. He was driving one of his cars one day and swerved into a woodpile, and succumbed to his injuries. I guess the seat belt was invented just after that.

But Francis wasn’t the first to use steam power for travel, of course. Trains and such ran on steam long before that. Sylvester Roper, in fact, invented the first motorcycle, when he put a small steam engine on a bicycle. He was going about 40 mph, showing off by outrunning a bunch of people-powered bikes in a race, when he crashed and died. At age 72. My kind of guy.

 People have been running for a long time, ever since the first time someone tried to pet a sabre-toothed tiger outside the Garden of Eden. So Jim Fixx didn’t really invent anything, but he sort of put running on the map with his book, the ‘Complete Book Of Running.’ Jim became a fitness nut in mid-life, and died of a heart attack while running at age 52. I always said exercise is bad for you.

 Not even rocket scientists are immune from killing themselves. Max Valier was an Austrian who invented both solid and liquid fueled rockets. He also built a rocket propelled car that went 250 mph. But when he started experimenting with alcohol for fuel, he blew himself up. Remember, kids, alcohol is bad for you.

Wan-Hu was also a rocket scientist, back in the old days, like the 1500s. Wan attached 47 rockets to a chair and lit them all at once, in an attempt to fly to the moon. Wan made a pretty impressive hole in the ground when the whole thing exploded. There is now a crater on the moon named after ol’ Wan. Really.

My favorite, though, is Henry Smolinski, who had an aeronautical engineering degree from the Northrup Institute of Technology. He took the wings from a Cessna 337 Skymaster and welded them to a 1971 Pinto, and built himself a flying car. And it worked. Until September, 1973, when Henry and his friend, Harold Blake, went for a spin, and a wing broke off at 300 feet. That’ll leave a mark.

Maybe someone needs to invent a cat that’s smart enough not to crawl up inside parked cars . . .

Kendal Hemphill is an outdoor humor columnist and public speaker who once invented an umbrella with holes, to make it lighter. It never caught on. Write to him at [email protected]