The Space Race knew numerous casualties, and one of the first was Austrian rocketeer Max Valier, who passed away 39 years before humans reached the moon. His work with rocket motors and his founding, in 1927, of the Society for Space Travel, were instrumental in humankind’s eventual giant leap. (One of the Society’s members was Wernher Von Braun, who later became a Nazi before leading the American postwar space program.) Newspaper writers had wondered for years when his daring experiments would do him in, but Valier actually perished while calmly tinkering in his lab. The story of his demise from the May 18, 1930 Brooklyn Daily Eagle.