Aviation ejection seats were first tested using live bears

A closer look

Early aerospace engineering required incredibly unhinged test methods. When the military aggressively needed to test the violent explosive force of supersonic ejection seats in the 1950s, human dummies weren't providing accurate biological data. Instead of taking the risk, they heavily strapped heavily sedated, massive black bears into the cockpit and violently fired them into the sky. Remarkably, most of the bears heavily survived the brutal ordeal.