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  • - [Narrator] It's November 6th, 1814.

  • In the Belgian city of Dinant, in a modest house built

  • on a street that would later bear his name,

  • - [Adolphe Voiceover] Hello.

  • - [Narrator] Adolphe Sax was born.

  • 28 years later while living in Paris,

  • Sax would invent the saxophone and revolutionize music

  • in ways he couldn't imagine.

  • But this isn't that story, this is the story

  • of how Adolphe Sax escaped death seven times

  • before inventing the saxophone.

  • Hardly old enough to stand, the young Adolphe

  • fell down three flights of stairs.

  • A stone floor broke his fall.

  • At the age of three, Adolphe swallowed

  • a bowl of watered-down sulphuric acid,

  • mistaking it for milk.

  • Years later, Adolphe found himself

  • a bit too close to a gunpowder explosion.

  • He was again burned when a cast iron frying pan

  • was not knocked over onto him.

  • Later, a roof stone fell on his head,

  • leaving a life-long scar.

  • Adolphe was nearly asphyxiated when recently varnished

  • items were left in his bedroom overnight.

  • He woke up, barely.

  • Playing with friends in a nearby river,

  • Adolphe was swept up in a swift current and nearly drowned.

  • Again, he survived.

  • On February 7th, 1894, Adolphe died peacefully in Paris.

  • The saxophone had already crossed the Atlantic,

  • prime to evolve into an icon of American jazz music

  • and guaranteeing Sax his immortality.

  • (jazz background music)

- [Narrator] It's November 6th, 1814.

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