History is replete with terrible ideas: For every Gutenberg press there is a Smell-O-Vision, and for every steam engine there is a collateralized debt obligation. Some caught on. Others, thankfully, haven’t.

Filling an airship with flammable gas: What could go wrong? Up until the Hindenburg disaster in 1937, no-one seemed to take issue with sending a giant ball of hydrogen gas into the atmosphere. But the Hindenburg’s fateful journey from Frankfurt to New Jersey — which resulted in the deaths of 35 people — handed Zeppelins a new reputation for destruction and were soon grounded.

No more rain-soaked cigarettes: We’re unable to find any evidence that this umbrella for your cigarettes was actually manufactured, but we really hope it was.

The parachute jacket: Guess what happened to Franz Reichelt, creator of the parachute jacket, when he leapt from the Eiffel Tower in 1912?

Electrified water: Go back to the beginning of the previous century and electrified water was actually a thing. People claimed that passing a current through H2O could help with everything from sterilization to curing hangovers. The idea isn’t as life-threateningly dumb as it sounds: Few people were electrocuted due to the charge disippating before people came into contact with it. The main problem was that electrified water didn’t do any of the things that its proponents claimed and the idea quickly fell out of fashion.

Spam email: Does anyone have Gary Thuerk’s email address?

An organic Roomba: For those parents who really want to socialize their children into accepting a life of hard labor: We give you the Baby Mop.

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