Morbid Fact Du Jour For August 12, 2009

Today’s Automated Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Robert Williams was the first man ever killed by a robot. On January 25, 1979, Williams climbed into a storage rack at the Ford Motor’s Flat Rock casting plant to retrieve a part because the parts-retrieval robot malfunctioned. Suddenly, the robot reactivated and slammed its arm into Williams’ head, killing him instantly.

The second death by robot happened just a couple of years afterwards in 1981. Kenji Urada, a 37-year-old Japanese maintenance engineer was working on a broken robot at a Kawasaki plant when he failed to turn it off. The robot’s mechanical arm accidentally pushed him into a grinding machine.

Culled from: Neatorama
Generously submitted by: Bex

Never trust a robot, I always say! It hasn’t failed me yet.

4 comments

  1. All my friends make fun of my crippling phobia of robots, but when they finally take over the world, they’ll finally see….

  2. Oh my Goddess… What a way to go. To be pushedinto a grinding machine.

    BTW I am at the tail end of reading The Body Brokers: Inside America’s Underground Trade in Human Remains. by Annie Cheney.

    Excellent read! And I highly recommend. Not sure if Despair has reviewed it. I am years behind in my reading. My next book has arrived and I am looking forward to it. Despair mentioned buying one as well.The Lives They Left Behind by Darby Penney & Peter Stastny.

    Morgana

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