Constantinos Vlachos in his “Tri-phibian” – a craft which, the inventor claimed, could navigate through air, water, and on land. It caught fire during a public demonstration outside the Library of Congress in 1935 – Vlachos was dragged from the craft by a policeman and spent nine months recovering in hospital.
Jeffrey High, a photographer, came across Vlachos in Washington in 1985:
“He would sit outside in this chair and honk an old bicycle horn every time a car passed, hoping to generate traffic into his…musuem I guess. Mr. Vlachos was an inventor who invented a flying car, and an engineless car, among other things. His inventions never came to fruition, as far as I know… but I spent well over 2 hours with him that day and the passion still burned within him. I can still feel his grip on my arm as he told me of his life.”
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 