The tragic daredevils who came a cropper before Felix Baumgartner: From Eiffel Tower 'parachute' jumper to ageing scion of the 'Flying Wallendas'

Daily Mail​

18-07-2025

The death of daredevil skydiver Felix Baumgartner this week has left thousands of fans shocked.
Although the extreme athlete had survived feats that included jumping from the edge of space, he died while paragliding in Italy, with investigators believing he suffered a cardiac arrest.
But Baumgartner is far from the first thrill-seeker to meet their end while doing what they love.
Franz Reichelt
Inventor Franz Reichelt died in 1912 when he jumped off the Eiffel Tower in the misguided belief that his homemade parachute would work.
Although he was a tailor by trade, Reichelt's real passion lay in inventing.
At the time, in the early 20th century, aeroplanes were in their infancy, and Reichelt was keen to develop a wearable parachute for when they went wrong.
He set about tailoring a special suit made from silk and rubber. He theorised that a falling person could open their arms to create wings that would slow their descent.
His first attempts, using dummies, were successful. However, when he refined the previously bulky design, the dummies crashed to earth.
The Daily Mail's report of the tragedy
When Reichelt tested the suit himself by dropping more than 30 feet, he needed piles of straw to break his fall and save his life.
However, the inventor believed that, if the drop was higher, the suit would work.
In 1912, he was given permission to test the suit from Paris's Eiffel Tower.
Although friends tried to convince him not to carry out the feat, Reichelt pressed on.
Cameras were there to ensure that Reichelt's feat would be recorded forever.
He was seen perching on a chair for several moments before he stepped over the fence on the first level of the tower and falling to his fate.
Rather than the suit working as he believed it would, Reichelt dropped like a stone in a flurry of fabric.
The inventor was killed instantly.
Karl Wallenda
When he met his end in March 1978, Karl Wallenda was one of the greatest high wire walkers in the world.
The German-born performer was at the head of a family whose name was synonymous with daredevil stunts.
His children, grandchildren, in-laws and even his wife were dare devils too.
But on the day he passed away, Wallenda was 73 years old, and his age had clearly affected his skills.
The stuntman had been trying to make the 200-foot crossing between the two towers of the Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The wire was more than 121feet above the ground. Wallenda had no safety harness, as was his trademark.
He made it around two thirds of the way across before losing his balance and plummeting to the ground.
Wallenda had hung on to the wire for a few seconds after stumbling.
But rescue or recovery was impossible. He let go and plunged to his death.
Less than two years before his death, Wallenda had successfully performed a daring tightrope walk 100ft above the River Thames near Tower Bridge in London.
Like on his last, fateful walk, he had no safety harness. The performer stumbled twice but completed the stunt unscathed.
At one point he even stood on his head on the wire. Waiting for him at the end were two Martinis.
'Why do I do it? For the excitement, the admiration, of course,' he said afterwards.
'It was bad out there. The wire was like a piece of rubber. And the wind, the wind was bad.'
In 1970, Wallenda had walked 1,000 feet along a cable across the 700ft deep Tallulah Gorge in Georgia.
Todd Green
Todd Green was, like his father, an esteemed stuntman.
But in 2011, he plunged 200feet to his death when his air show wing walk stunt went disastrously wrong.
The performer had planned to climb out of the plane he was flying in and get into a helicopter that was directly above him.
Spectators at the air show in Selfridge, near Detroit in the US state of Michigan were watching excitedly on the ground.
But as he reached for the helicopter's metal landing skid, Green slipped.
Horrified onlookers watched as he plunged to the ground and was killed.
Some spectators thought that the father-of-two's fall was part of the stunt, but the arrival of an ambulance quickly indicated that there had been a serious accident.
Donald Campbell
Donald Campbell was the handsome, charismatic, British record breaker.
In 1964, he had set both the world land speed record and the world water speed record.
Those feats came after he had blazed a trail with a series of increasingly faster runs in his Bluebird hydroplane.
On January 4, 1967, he was looking to again break the world water speed record on Coniston Water in the Lake District.
But he died during the attempt to top the 300mph barrier when the boat flipped.
The wreck and Campbell's body were salvaged in 2001.
There was then a dispute between Campbell's family - who wanted to hand the craft to a museum - and engineer Bill Smith, who wanted to restore it.
It was eventually agreed that the boat would be given to the Ruskin Museum in Coniston.
Bobby Leach
In 1911, Englishman Bobby Leach decided to find fame by going over the terrifying Niagara Falls in a specially constructed barrel.
Incredibly, he survived the feat but spent nearly six months in hospital recovering from broken kneecaps and ribs.
After recovering, he made money from his plunge by selling postcards and going on world tours.
It was while he was on tour in New Zealand in 1926 that the daredevil's luck ran out.
While walking in the street, he slipped on a piece of orange peel and broke his leg.
Complications from the break forced doctors to amputate his leg. Infection set in and Leach died.