On November 6, 1814, Adolphe Sax is born in Dinant, Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium) to a family of musical instrument makers. Despite suffering multiple incidents that nearly killed him as a child (including accidentally drinking sulfuric acid, falling down a flight of stairs, falling into a hot stove, and swallowing a needle among others), Sax went on to study music at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels. After leaving the Conservatory, he proceeded to work on developing his own musical instrument designs including a modification of the bass clarinet, a valved bugle known as a saxhorn (which contributed to the development of the flugelhorn), and an unsuccessful contrabass clarinet design. However, the most well-known of his creations would be the saxophone. Designed for use by both orchestras and military bands, Sax developed the instrument to combine the technical precision associated with woodwinds with the ability to project of the brass instruments. Though the saxophone never quite reached the popularity in classical music that Sax had hoped for, it quickly became popular among military marching bands and later became a staple of jazz, rock, and other genres over the decades. Sax was given a position teaching the saxophone at the Royal Conservatory in 1857; however, he would also be sued multiple times in the following years by rival instrument makers. On February 7, 1894, Adolphe Sax died in poverty in Paris, France, at the age of 79.