American Aviation Changed Forever When A Eugenicist Serial Killer Broke Wilbur Wright’s Nose Playing Hockey

Who you are is shaped by your circumstance. Wilbur Wright was a brilliant young man from a well-to-do family, and the circumstances of his life compelled him to magnificent accomplishments. The elder of the Wright Brothers, Wilbur’s legacy has made him a household name even 113 years after his death, because of the brothers’ contributions to the history of manned flight and the importance of their scientific discoveries. But perhaps none of that would have occurred at all if not for Wilbur getting his entire face blown apart in a hockey game when he was a teen by the neighborhood bully. 

According to David McCullough’s 2015 book The Wright Brothers, the incident took place on a small frozen lake near Dayton, Ohio in the winter between 1885 and ’86. Star athlete, accomplished academic, and aspiring Yalie, Wilbur had his entire life planned out, and it probably didn’t involve the science of aerodynamics. Getting his bell rung upended his life, and the history of aviation as we know it. 

While playing a game of “shinny,” a version of ice hockey, he was brutally attacked by neighborhood bully Oliver Crook Haugh. Nearly all of Wright’s upper teeth were knocked clean from his mandible, and his nose was mangled. As a result of the incident the elder Wright brother required extensive surgeries to his face and jaw, and was fitted with a set of false teeth. Reports indicate he suffered life-long digestive issues, heart palpitations, and severe depression.

The hockey incident changed the course of Wilbur’s life, as he dropped out of formal education altogether, foregoing a diploma, let alone his ticket to Yale. Over the next three years his primary motivation was caring for his terminally ill mother. After her passing, he dedicated himself to a printing business he shared with his younger brother Orville, and later a bicycle repair shop. Were it not for that fateful hockey game, Wilbur might have gone on to be a boring lawyer that never accomplished international renowned, whom nobody remembers. Oliver Haugh’s actions changed history, and he didn’t even know it. 

While Wilbur’s life went on to great and famous accomplishments, Haugh’s spiraled to dark places until his execution in 1907. Haugh lived just two blocks from the Wright family, though his circumstances were entirely different. Apparently young Haugh suffered from rotting teeth, and self-medicated with cocaine tooth serum. He later began experimenting with counterfeit tooth “cures” whose primary ingredient was opium. Haugh had plans on becoming a doctor, and enrolled in medical school while working at the town pharmacy mixing drugs. Between 1888 and 1893 Haugh attended three different medical schools and eventually graduated despite shakey financials and addiction to drugs and alcohol. 

Haugh, inspired by the 1886 work of science fiction Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, wanted to “create a new race of beings to evolve humanity” and began experimenting on himself in pursuit of his twisted vision of human evolution.

“I am at work on the evolution of a drug, which in its perfection, will create a new era of science, a new order of thought, and a new race of beings. I will bring into the reality of day something more wonderful than [author Robert Louis] Stevenson in his wildest dreams ever imagined. I will prove that which he only suggested–the certainty that two beings can exist in the one body, the one blotting out the influence of the other.”

Haugh opened and shuttered many practices across Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan, killing dozens of patients in the process. A drug-addicted philanderer, liar, cheat and criminal, Haugh roamed the midwest setting up new offices where he claimed to cure any disease, and would soon be forced out of town by an angry mob. His final attempt at running a business was a saloon in Cleveland, Ohio, which offered opiates, prostitution, and medical services, though it was quickly broken up by law enforcement. His girlfriend died while he was in jail and Haugh sheepishly returned to Dayton and moved back in with his parents, because his wife wouldn’t have him back.

Oliver Crook Haugh was found guilty of murdering his mother, father, and brother in the autumn of 1905. The Dayton home where they all lived burst into flames just after midnight, and Oliver claimed he was able to escape the fire but his parents and brother had become trapped. It was uncovered that Haugh had ordered a large amount of lamp oil and quantities of hyoscine hydrobromide, a drug he’d taken during one of his two stints in an asylum. In large enough doses the drug caused paralysis. It was uncovered that Oliver had been removed from his parents’ will, and it was assumed that he’d murdered them both and the brother who stood to inherit, as a way to secure the family estate for himself. Haugh was believed to have married nine women and killed four of them with hyoscine injection overdose. At least seven other victims were believed to have been murdered by Haugh. He was vehement that killing the infirm and insane was good for society.   

They say that I murdered my father, my mother and brother with hyoscine for the sake of the money. Then they say that when I have taken enough of the hyoscine the man within me disappears, and Hyde is the power. It seems and though I must do something–destroy something. My only recourse is to get out into the street–out into the open country–away from men and women, lest I murder them. It is possible for me to have murdered these people and know nothing of it . . . all that I do know is, that if I die for these crimes, I shall at least have established the proof of the theory on which I have always insisted–that two beings, one of good, the other of evil, may exist in the same man, and in that respect at least I shall have rendered a distinct service to posterity.

Haugh was put to death by electric chair in April of 1907, three years and a bit after the Wright Brothers made four brief flights in the first powered aircraft. We never know what circumstances will push the rivers of our lives in different directions, and it’s difficult to give Haugh any credit for his interventions in the lives of the Wright Brothers, but certainly without the murderous liar the history of transportation, as we know it, would be significantly different.