Banvard's Folly

Thirteen Tales of Renowned Obscurity, Famous Anonymity, and Rotten Luck.

History will always remember the Edisons, Einsteins and Darwins. But what about the others with similarly revolutionary ideas, but who plummeted into oblivion?

Here are the extraordinary, and inspirational, lives of thirteen "losers" who achieved great heights in their lifetimes only to then meet crushing defeats.

There is the man who discovered N-rays only to be eclipsed by X-rays; the "Fenian Ram", a submarine built by Irish immigrants in Manhattan to cross the Atlantic and sink the British fleet; the Frenchman behind a doomed universal language based on musical tones; the unknown and uncredited inventor of the first digital computer; and the tragically overconfident Shakespeare forger.