Meet Franz Reichelt 'The Flying Tailor' who jumped to his death

Fracois 'Franz' Reichelt (The Flying Tailor)

Meet crazy tailor, inventor and parachuting pioneer, who jumped to his death from the Eiffel Tower while testing one of his designed wearable parachute.

Born Franz Reichelt in present day Austria in 1879 and moved to Paris in 1898. He obtained French nationality in 1908, adopting the first name Francois ( The French equivalent of the Germanic "Franz").

Franz also referred to as the Flying Tailor, started the development of suit for aviators that would convert into a parachute and allow them to survive a fall should they be forced to leave their aircraft. His initial experiments were successful, though he experimented with dummies which he dropped from the fifth floor of his apartment building, but a bit of failure with his subsequent designs.

Mr. Francois Reichelt, believed his failures was as a result of no suitable high test platform, So he petitioned the Parisan Prefecture of Police for permission to conduct a test from the Eiffel Tower. He was finally granted permission in early 1912.

He arrived at the Tower on February 4 1912 with two of his friends, and made it clear that he intended to jump himself in one of the suit rather than make use of a dummy for the jump. Despite attempts by his friends and spectators to dissuade him, He just told them GERARAHERE and proceeded to jumped from the first platform of the tower wearing his invention. And GHEN GHEN The parachute failed to deploy and he crashed into the icy ground at the foot of the tower.He died instantly but was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. See video of his reckless jump below: (Source: junkworthknowing)

The next day, newspapers were full of the story of the reckless inventor and his fatal jump – many included pictures of the fall taken by press photographers who had gathered to witness Reichelt's experiment – and a film documenting the jump appeared in newsreels.