On February 4, 1912, Franz Reichelt, an Austrian-born French tailor is standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower wearing a parachute suit of his own design. After countless tests where his invention failed to safely guide test dummies to the ground, Reichelt concluded that the problem was a result of not starting at a high enough point. He received permission from the Parisian police to conduct a test from atop the tower, but at the last minute revealed that he would be wearing the parachute suit, not a crash dummy. At 8:22 am, he climbed the guardrail, tested the wind by throwing a piece of paper into the air, waited for forty seconds, then jumped. The parachute suit wrapped around his body and he plummeted to the ground before crashing into the icy ground at the foot of the tower. He died instantly.
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