Some people call them crazy, while others consider them heroes, but there’s no denying that daredevils and stunt performers continue to command a huge amount of public fascination thanks to their death-defying acts of courage and outright lunacy. From skydivers and wirewalkers to magicians and flight-obsessed truck drivers, here are the top ten stunt men and daredevils.
5. Charles Blondin
Charles Blondin, AKA The Great Blondin, was a 19th century French acrobat and tightrope walker who gained fame in Europe and the United States for his daring high wire acts. Blondin started training to be an acrobat at age five, and by six he was already performing under the stage name “The Little Wonder.” In his twenties he was one of the most popular performers in Europe, but his crowning achievement came in 1859, when he traveled to the United States and became the first person to cross the 160-foot high gorge beneath Niagara Falls on a tightrope. Blondin easily walked the 1100 feet from one side of the gorge to the other on his first try. In a demonstration of his skill, he then did it several more times with a number of different variations, including being blindfolded, pushing a wheelbarrow, wearing stilts, and carrying a man on his back. In the most bizarre crossing of all, Blondin stopped halfway across the falls, sat down on the tightrope, and cooked and dined on an omelet.
4. Alain Robert
Frenchman Alain Robert is a well known daredevil who helped pioneer the sport of “urban climbing” with his highly dangerous–and highly illegal–climbs up some of the world’s tallest skyscrapers, a practice that has earned him the nickname “French Spiderman.” Robert claims to have gotten his start scaling buildings at age 12, when he forgot the keys to his house and was forced to climb the outside of the building to get inside. Since then, he has made a name for himself both as a rock climber and for scaling over 85 structures and skyscrapers around the world, including the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House, the Sears Tower, and the Petronas Twin Towers. Robert makes every climb freehand, using only the natural architecture of the buildings to help him, and claims to have fallen seven times, twice from heights as high as fifty feet. Robert’s stunts are almost always unsanctioned by local authorities, and in nearly every case he is arrested upon reaching the top of the building he’s climbing.
3. Philippe Petit
A self-taught high wire artist, Philippe Petit is best known for walking a tight rope between the then newly constructed Twin Towers in 1974. Petit got his start as a street performer in Paris, but soon began to conceive of using his wire act as a kind of performance piece at famous world structures. He soon walked across a wire on the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia, and then between the towers of the Notre Dame de Paris. His crowning achievement came in 1974, when he engineered a wire act between the two World Trade Towers. Using falsified documents, assumed names, disguises, and months of planning, Petit and a small band of accomplices managed to bypass the building’s security to get to the top floor of one of the towers. They used a bow and arrow to fire the tight rope from one building to another, and after securing it, Petit proceeded to perform on the wire for 45 minutes before giving himself up to police. All charges against him were eventually dropped, and he was even asked to perform again in Central Park for the children of New York City.
2. Harry Houdini
Although he is best remembered as a magician, Harry Houdini was one of the original daredevils, and is responsible for pioneering many stunts that are still tried today. Houdini got his start as a small time magician and card trick performer, but he first came to prominence when he started experimenting with high profile escape acts on New York’s Coney Island. In his most famous stunts, Houdini would be placed in handcuffs and then locked in a crate or glass box, which was then lowered underwater. In some cases, these tricks would require him to hold his breath for more than 3 minutes. Other dangerous tricks included the so-called “Chinese Water Torture Cell,” and a now infamous trick where he was buried alive under six feet of earth and barely managed to escape with his life.
1. Evel Knievel
There is no daredevil more iconic or respected than motorcycle stunt jumper Evel Knievel, and for good reason. In a career that saw him suffer huge highs as well as many failures (and 37 broken bones), Knievel established himself an American folk hero, and his nationally televised motorcycle stunts remain among the most watched sporting events of all time. Knievel got his start as a motocross rider, but when in need of money he conceived the idea of performing stunts on his motorcycle. In his first jump, he hopped over a box full of rattlesnakes and two mountain lions, and he soon found sponsorship and became one of the first professional daredevils. Soon, Knievel was regularly jumping his Harley Davidson over rows of cars, trucks, and even the fountains at Caesar’s Palace. His most famous stunt came in 1974, when he attempted to jump the Snake River Canyon on a rocket-propelled motorcycle called the X-1. A malfunction caused the bike’s parachute to prematurely open and ruin the jump, but the media storm surrounding the event had already cemented Knievel’s reputation as the king of all daredevils, and he remained in the spotlight until his death in 2007.
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