With that, here are the races throughout history that catered purely to those who were just plain sick of living.

Like any sport that relies on a combustible engine and hundreds of pounds of sharply angled metal, car racers generally accept a certain amount of mortal liability when they compete. Today, there are tight safety precautions to ensure that the threat of death and mayhem is minimized as much as possible, but none of that would have been possible if not for the lawless absurdity and charred corpses early motorsports kept spitting out.

6 The Paris to Madrid (1903)

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The year 1903 was a magical time when cars had advanced enough that they could go more than 60 or 70 MPH, but not enough so that any safety measures had been invented.

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"I AM INVINCIBLE!"

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So you can kind of imagine what was about to take place when everyone who had one of those new "automobiles" rocked up in Paris for the Paris to Madrid race.

In all, around 275 vehicles "of all sorts, shapes and sizes ... some un-safe, unsuitable and impossible" turned up to compete. As the name implies, the race was intended to be a run from Paris to Madrid with a night time stopover in Bordeaux. But plans quickly changed when over half of the participants turned into smoking shrapnel in the first few hours.

Nobody made it to Madrid.

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Back then, a "hairpin turn" was "literally any turn at all."

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As a result of the constant, unremitting horror that unfolded on the first day, the race officials just drew a new finish line in Bordeaux.