A Brief History
On March 4, 2020, Nik Wallenda of the famous acrobat and daredevil family, became the first person to walk on a wire above the crater of the Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua. Not to be outdone, his wife, Erendira, performed an aerial routine above the smoking crater!
Digging Deeper
The Wallenda family is famous for many of their death-defying firsts, with Nik personally holding 11 Guinness World Records, including being the first to walk across Niagara Falls on a high wire.
Other daredevils have achieved epic firsts, including:
Annie Edson Taylor, the first to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel in 1901.
Albert Berry in 1912, became the first ever to parachute safely from a flying airplane.
Helmut Schenk, in 1942, was the first pilot to ever safely eject from an airplane in flight.
Finally, Laso Schaller made a 192 foot high dive into water in 2015. His speed at impact was 76 mph!
Question for students (and subscribers): What is the greatest daredevil feat? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Skolnick, Adam. One Breath: Freediving, Death, and the Quest to Shatter Human Limits. Audible Studios, 2016.
Wallenda, Nik. Facing Fear: Step Out in Faith and Rise Above What’s Holding You Back. Thomas Nelson, 2020.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by kevint3141 of Wallenda walking a tightrope at Canada’s Wonderland theme park, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
