Guys in homemade wingsuits, a strongman parachuting with a dummy, and a dude in a deck chair, soaring thousands
of feet over Hollywood. These are just a few of the people who have survived some strange stunts.
The fear of being buried alive is called taphophobia, and it's a powerful fear indeed.
Most people would not voluntarily be buried alive, but Harry Houdini was not like most people.
The world-famous escape artist, illusionist, stuntman, and magician was known for his
willingness to put himself in, and get himself back out of, extreme situations.
Many of his stunts were designed to be close calls, but one time, he really almost didn't
get back out. During a 1915 stunt, accounts say that Houdini had himself placed in shackles and
buried beneath six feet of sandy soil. The earth was heavier than he expected,
and digging himself out took longer than the pioneering daredevil had counted on,
and he nearly lost consciousness as he panicked. After managing to scramble up through the dirt,
Houdini was close to death and needed to be aided by assistants. It wasn't the only time
Houdini had barely escaped death, but it was one of the events that disturbed him the most.
Jonathan Goodwin might be considered a worthy successor to Harry Houdini. In fact, he was
so inspired after reading about Houdini at the age of 7 that it changed the course of his life,
as he recalled to The Mirror. This Welsh-born daredevil's exploits have
included getting buried alive, free climbing and free diving, setting himself on fire,
and being attacked by sharks and venomous snakes, just to scratch the surface.
Goodwin got more than his share of scratches, however, when one of his most audacious stunt
attempts went terribly wrong. While preparing for a stunt on "America's Got Talent: Extreme,"
Goodwin was injured so grievously it's rather amazing he survived.
For the stunt, the daredevil was hanging dozens of feet up in the air, shackled,
with two cars suspended on either side of him. The plan was for him to slip his bonds and climb to
safety before the hanging cars collided with one another, but when a rope snapped, he was crushed
between the cars. The cars then burst into flame, and Goodwin fell some 30 feet to the ground,
hitting his head, severing his spinal cord, destroying a kidney, and shattering both of his
legs. Amazingly, Goodwin lived and even poked fun at his near-death accident from his hospital bed,
though ultimately, the incident left him partially paralyzed.
"It was pretty… it was pretty gnarly, you know,
it sounds very dramatic, sitting here, but I did nearly die."
Evel Knievel was 29 years old at the time of the fateful New Year's Eve jump that
broke several bones, caused a concussion so severe he would be hospitalized for a month,
and secured him recognition as the world's most daring daredevil.
The failed jump took place at the Caesars Palace casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Knievel planned to
soar across the massive fountain in front of the casino on his Triumph Bonneville T120 motorcycle,
but later reported that the bike's engine lost power right as he was ascending the
final ramp. Without sufficient speed to clear the gap, the daredevil came to the
earth short of his planned landing spot and was horribly injured in the crash.
Having had the event captured on film, Knievel sold the footage to ABC,
which was a solid PR move. The crash certainly didn't diminish Knievel's
taste for danger. Despite his injuries and brush with death, Knievel would go on to
complete more jumps, remaining active and fearless until the early 1980s.
"Are you afraid, at this moment?" "I've never been afraid in my life."
Wingsuit-wearing BASE jumpers owe a lot to Clem Sohn, a pioneer of the extreme sport.
Almost a hundred years ago, Sohn crafted a one-of-a-kind flying suit made of
canvas fabric stretched over a frame of metal rods; when he spread his arms and legs wide,
his suit allowed him to glide through the air, sometimes for many miles.
Sohn would leap out of planes in his wingsuit, soaring about to the delight of crowds below,
his progress tracked by a stream of flour billowing out from a sack he carried to
create a visible trail. Sohn nearly died multiple times when he lost control of his
homemade wingsuit, and when parachutes did not deploy properly. During one stunt at
London's Gatwick Airport in the early 1930s, as Michael Abrams details in "Birdmen, Batmen,
and Skyflyers," Sohn's parachute tangled in his suit, and his reserve only narrowly
saved his life. He still crashed into a taxi and only broke his shoulder, miraculously.
His narrow escapes eventually ran out. At a Paris, France air show in the early spring of 1937,
Sohn fell to his death after another gear failure. Thousands of people were on hand
and watched as the 26-year-old American plummeted
earthward, unable to deploy his safety parachutes. He did not survive impact.
The first few decades of the 20th century were a heady time in many ways,
especially for those who worked in the new fields of filmmaking and aviation.
And when the two of those things crossed over, things got wild.
A pioneer among this group of early stunt workers and daredevils was Joe Bonomo,
a man who competed as a strongman, and was an avid parachutist in the early days of the hobby.
Bonomo once proposed a stunt so dangerous that no other stuntmen agreed to do it with him: two men
would leap from a plane with one shared parachute. Not to be dissuaded, Bonomo instead leaped from
the plane clutching a dummy. When Bonomo landed in the water after the drop, fierce wind gusts
wrenched his parachute sideways, nearly causing him to drown. For 30 minutes, Bonomo used the
dummy to stay afloat, until he was rescued, and would later credit the dummy with saving his life.
"Larry Walters had always dreamed of flying a balloon to a far away place."
A 33-year old truck driver living in North Hollywood at the time of his aerial exploit,
Larry Walters said he had dreamed of doing something extreme since he was a young teenager,
according to The New York Times. He fulfilled his dream by connecting over
40 six-foot diameter helium-filled weather balloons to a lawn chair.
With some ballast and some refreshments, he lifted off into the skies above Los Angeles.
Walters had put a few safety precautions in place, including a parachute and a BB gun
he would use to shoot a balloon or two when it was time to descend. Walters also had a
radio he would use to put out a distress call once he realized he had not accounted for all
aspects of the flight properly. Once the lines holding Walters down were severed,
he zipped into the sky much faster and higher than anticipated, quickly reaching an altitude
of 16,000 feet. With hands nearly too numb to work his gun, he eventually shot several
balloons before accidentally dropping his glasses, and then the gun, overboard.
"And you just shot the balloons out and that caused you to come down?"
"Well, it was carefully, I shot the outer balloons out first. I knew what I was doing!"
Nonetheless, he descended, only to become ensnared in power lines
that could have killed him instantly. He eventually reached the ground unharmed,
but his landing did knock out power in that part of the city of Long Beach and incur
a $1500 fine for violating Federal airspace regulations.
Buster Keaton was the OG actor-slash-stuntman, with action stars like Jackie Chan proudly drawing
inspiration from the early Hollywood star, according to an interview Chan did with The
New York Times in 1995. Keaton performed dozens of hair-raising stunts in his day, including
having façades of buildings crash down around him, jumping from moving trains, leaping from building
to building, jumping in and out of moving cars, falling out of windows, and on the list goes.
Keaton defied injury and death regularly, but it was the water tower stunt in the film
"Sherlock Jr." that almost did him in. In the scene, Keaton first rides atop a train,
then clings to the spout of a water tower set beside the tracks. When the spout is
pulled down by his weight, a torrent of water knocks Keaton to the ground,
which was supposed to be comical. Except that Keaton landed on the rails and fractured his neck.
Keaton was reportedly in agony, but he was also a relentless performer,
so he went on with the production anyhow. The injury was discovered
many years later when he was X-rayed for unrelated purposes,
revealing that had he landed slightly differently, he would have been paralyzed or killed.
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