Some people never stop chasing the adrenaline rush that only comes from performing the wildest
and most dangerous stunts, and unfortunately, the risk is sometimes far greater than the
reward.
Here's a look at daredevils who tragically lost their lives doing insane stunts.
Most of us don't need to build a rocket in order to know that the Earth isn't flat.
Still, there are some people who are convinced that it's all a big conspiracy that literally
every scientist in the world is in on.
It seemed Mike Hughes was one of that handful of people who was convinced that the Earth
is flat, but he wanted the rest of the world to be convinced, too.
So he built a rocket, which he launched from the California desert.
That's one way to find out whether or not the Earth is flat.
Those remote cameras should tell you everything you need to know.
Except...he didn't just send up cameras, he wanted to see the flat Earth with his own
eyes.
Unfortunately, his rocket crashed shortly after launch, and he was killed before he
could reach the hoped-for altitude of 5,000 feet.
Hughes' publicist, Darren Shuster, told the New York Times after Hughes' death that Hughes
didn't actually believe the Earth was flat.
He said,
"He was eccentric and believed in some government conspiracies, for sure, but it was a P.R.
stunt."
Either way, it's not quite clear.
"I believe it is flat."
"I believe you don't believe that and you just want a free trip to space."
"A lot of people think that."
Regardless, Hughes wasn't an amateur daredevil.
According to the BBC, he'd successfully completed a lower-altitude launch the year before his
fatal attempt, and he set a Guinness World Record in 2002 for the longest limousine jump.
So his fatal accident wasn't necessarily because he was an inexperienced daredevil, and there
was definitely an element of very, very bad luck.
Jessi Combs originally set the land speed record for a four-wheeled vehicle in October
2013.
Her jet-powered vehicle hit 398 miles per hour, but Combs wasn't satisfied.
She made a few attempts to bust her own speed record and clocked more than 483 mph in those
attempts, but the runs couldn't be recorded as records because of mechanical issues.
Undaunted, Combs decided she was going to aim for 619 mph.
Ultimately, she wanted to beat Kitty O'Neil's land speed record of 512 mph, which had been
set in a three-wheeled vehicle in 1976.
Combs was in her jet-powered car on a dry lake bed in Oregon's Alvord Desert when USA
Today says the front wheel suffered a mechanical failure, causing the entire wheel assembly
to collapse.
Combs had accelerated to nearly 550 mph at the time of the failure, and was posthumously
awarded the world record.
Human beings love competitive sports.
Human beings also love to watch other human beings do ridiculously dangerous stuff.
The X Games, which have been held every year since 1995, are a happy union of the two,
ridiculously dangerous competitive sporting events complete with gold medals, prize money,
and mortal peril.
Still, despite a large number of serious injuries, the X Games managed to get through quite a
lot of years without any fatalities...until Caleb Moore's freestyle snowmobile jump at
the Winter X Games in 2013.
Moore was performing in the freestyle snowmobile competition when he attempted a backflip at
a speed that was a little too slow for the maneuver.
According to Deadspin, he under-rotated, and the snowmobile's skis dug into the snow, flinging
him from the seat.
That might have been survivable on its own, but unfortunately, Moore's 450-pound snowmobile
landed on his chest.
Still, it looked like Moore would be okay, he actually walked away from the scene.
A few hours later, though, it became clear that the accident had damaged his heart.
He went into cardiopulmonary arrest and died a few days later, becoming the first X Games
fatality
Base jumping carries a one-in-2,317 risk of death.
Sounds pretty safe, right?
That's per jump, though, so if you jump 25 times a year for ten years, well, you'll probably
like those odds a lot less.
Base jumping websites even admit it's dangerous.
Heck, danger is part of the appeal.
But, unfortunately, it's also why we really shouldn't be surprised that there are so many
deceased base jumpers.
Uli Emanuele was famous for a wing-suit jump through an 6.5-foot-wide crevasse in a Swiss
mountain, which is widely thought to be the most difficult wing-suit maneuver ever accomplished.
But even the best base jumpers are vulnerable when they're flying around the mountaintops
at speeds exceeding 100 mph, and Emanuele's luck ran out while he was shooting video for
GoPro in the Dolomites.
According to The Inertia, Emanuele lost control during a jump and crashed into the rocks before
he could deploy his parachute.
He was 29 years old.
Sixty-year-old Angela Madsen was a Paralympic rower and an inspiration for anyone trying
to come back from a serious injury.
Madsen was injured while playing basketball in 1981, and a botched surgery cost her the
use of her legs.
In 1997, she became a competitive rower, and in 2012, she won a bronze medal at the Paralympic
games.
Madsen's ambitions went a long way past rowing in competitions, though, and in 2007, she
became the first woman with a disability to row across the Atlantic ocean.
Then, in 2009, she became one of the first two women to row across the Indian Ocean.
She then set her sights on the Pacific.
This time, she planned to go solo.
Tragically, Madsen died 60 days into her attempt to row across the Pacific Ocean alone.
In her last communication, she'd mentioned that her boat needed repairs, but by the next
day, she'd fallen silent, and tracking data indicated that the boat was not being rowed.
The Coast Guard found her floating in the ocean on June 22, 2020, still tethered to
her boat.
So far, no one knows the circumstances that led to her death.