Good videos, with context.
The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History

The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History

Veritasium
6 HN recommenders · discussed 2022–2026
Open YouTube ↗

About this video

Veritasium tells the story of Thomas Midgley Jr., who introduced leaded gasoline and CFCs, and covers the science behind lead exposure and ozone damage. It also touches on isotope geochemistry used to uncover the history.

Why it appears in the archive

HN commenters recommend it whenever leaded fuel, toxic chemicals or corporate profit motives come up, praising its storytelling and accessible science.

AI-generated summary and labels from the source dataset; verify important details against the video. Source & credits.

From the Hacker News discussion

belltaco · 2023-10 · strong rec

If you want a fascinating story telling video with a lot of sciency stuff for the relative layman, here's an excellent one by Veritasium on how it happened. "The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History" [VIDEO]

Read original comment ↗
wirelesspotat · 2022-04 · rec

I don't like how "toxic forever chemicals in the bloodstream" is a normal thing Veritasium has a great YouTube video about this: "The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History"[0] [0] - [VIDEO]

Read original comment ↗
jeffxtreme · 2022-05 · rec

(2021) Veritasium covers the story behind lead in gasoline in [VIDEO] , it's a really interesting albeit sad video. If I recall correctly, he mentions this study in the video.

Read original comment ↗
blensor · 2022-09 · rec

Have you seen this Veritasium video about the man who came up with adding tetraethyllead to gasonline and it's negative impact on humanity? [VIDEO] Given how dangerous lead is in even the tiniest quantities it is really surprising that there has not been more pressure to change that.

Read original comment ↗
thret · 2023-12 · rec

[VIDEO] This youtube channel does a good job of explaining his inventions and just how bad for society they were.

Read original comment ↗
amiga386 · 2025-12 · rec

Veritasium did a great video on Midgley: [VIDEO] And therein they give the reason why ethanol was passed over: a lot of it is required to be effective (~10% of the fuel mixture), seriously dampening the profit margin of fuel sales! It works, but tetraethyl lead is so much cheaper

Read original comment ↗
mrmuagi · 2022-04 · reference

The people vested in using lead in fuel said so out of profit motive, but it seems lead was widely known to be harmful for hundreads of years [0] before it was using it fuel. [0] [VIDEO]

Read original comment ↗
sschueller · 2022-04 · reference

Good because as we just seen in the latest Vartasium video [1], even chemicals or elements we know are toxic for hundreds of years get pushed into the public and cause huge harm. [1] [VIDEO]

Read original comment ↗