On February 4th, 1912, a French tailor, named Franz Reichelt, decided to test his new parachute design by jumping off the Eiffel Tower. In 1912, aviation was still in its infancy so there were a lot of crashes. Because of this, there was a lot of interest in a means by which pilots could safely jump out of aircraft if they encountered trouble. One Colonel Lalance even offered a prize of 10,000 francs to anyone who could come up with a practical design. So the race was on among inventors to solve this problem. After one year of trying, Franz Reichelt finally obtained permission from the police to perform a test from the Eiffel Tower. On the day of the test, a large crowd of onlookers, including 30 journalists, gathered to witness the event. The police were also present. Then he surprised everyone by telling them he was going to make jump himself and not use a dummy. His friends tried unsuccessfully to dissuade him... Another inventor named Gaston Hervieu, who was also working on a parachute, tried to talk him out of it. He provided him with technical details as to why the parachute wouldn't work, but he wouldn't listen. As he climbed up the Eiffel Tower to make the jump, he turned to the crowd and shouted, "See you soon!". They did see him soon. After hesitating on the ledge for about forty seconds, he jumped off... The parachute did not deploy. It wrapped around him, and he plummeted 187 feet to his death. Lesson: What Franz Reichelt did was similar to jumping headfirst into a pool in order to determine its depth. Had he dropped a dummy of equal weight from the Eiffel Tower, it would have failed too, but he would still have the opportunity to iterate and try new designs. Before trying new things that could end in disastrous failure we should test safely first. "Do not test the depth of a river with both feet." --- African Proverb