A closer look
William Huskisson holds the incredibly embarrassing distinction of being the first widely reported passenger casualty of a railway accident. In 1830, during the grand opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the British Member of Parliament decided to step out of his carriage to shake hands with the Duke of Wellington, completely ignoring the fact that George Stephenson's famous Rocket locomotive was barrelling down the adjacent track. Huskisson panicked, attempted to climb back into his carriage, and fell directly into the path of the train, resulting in his leg being crushed by the bleeding-edge technology of a thirty mile-per-hour steam engine. His tragic demise basically served as the world's first public service announcement to mind the gap and look both ways, though we still struggle with these concepts two centuries later
