You can see things you couldn’t even dream of online.
Pretty much anything is available for your viewing pleasure on the internet.
But that means that sometimes, the greatest videos go completely unnoticed.
Some of these show people doing things which you would’ve believed to be impossible,
things which will totally blow you away and change the way you see the world.
Ready to see the impossible being made possible?
Let’s get it on!
Skydiving is dangerous.
Sure it can be done, maybe you even have a friend or two who’ve done it, but things
can and do go wrong - like your parachute not deploying.
If that happens, then you’re in serious trouble.
With that in mind, it’s definitely impossible to jump out of a plane without a parachute.
Right?
Well Luke Aikins decided to prove it’s possible, even though we all know it’s not.
He jumped out of a plane at 25,000 feet in the air, without a parachute or a wingsuit.
Any rational person would declare him dead after that but it all happened live on TV
so we know that’s not true: he just fell for two minutes at a speed of 120 miles per
hour and landed safely in a net, which has previously only been done by the Looney Tunes,
which just goes to prove just how impossible that stunt actually was.
You’ve seen old Kung Fu movies where people break wooden blocks with their feet or fists.
It’s a hugely impressive skill - one karate chop and that plank is history.
Ever seen someone do that to a concrete block though?
Now that’s really a level up.
Some people can do that in the traditional way, but this Bosnian TaeKwonDo champion can
do it with his head.
That alone should be impossible, but he can also do more than one block at a time.
He holds an absolutely insane world record for breaking an impossible 111 concrete blocks
with his head in only 35 seconds, and he was only 16 years old at the time.
Every part of that record sounds impossible - even just the basic premise of being able
to break concrete with your head, but he did it anyway and the crowd absolutely loved it.
Getting humans into space was an incredible achievement in human history.
Successes like that require incredible amounts of technology - like the work that’s put
into vehicles that can break the sound barrier.
The human body simply can’t do it alone.
At least that’s what we thought.
Felix Baumgartner broke the sound barrier with his body alone back in 2010, and he did
that impossible thing by jumping from the edge of space.
He didn’t get to the edge of space with a rocket ship though - just to make the entire
stunt even more impossible, he got up there using a helium balloon.
Sure he called it a stratosphere balloon, but it was fundamentally just a balloon.
He took it up to 128,100 feet, and then jumped out, reaching 833mph speeds before the atmosphere
slowed him down.
Yep, you heard that right, the atmosphere slowed him, like it does when rockets return
from space.
His freefall lasted 4 minutes and 20 seconds, but let’s face it, that’s just a detail
among all the impossible stunts happening in this story.
There aren’t many things in this world that are certain, but one thing is: humans can’t
fly.
That’s why planes exist.
We know for a fact that if you jump from a height, you fall, so at the very least you
need a parachute to save you.
Unless you’re Gary Connery.
He decided a parachute wasn’t needed and took only a wingsuit with him when he jumped
out of a helicopter 2,400 feet in the air.
He then flew back to earth with his wings and landed safely, with only some cardboard
boxes to break his fall, despite reaching speeds of 80mph.
So there you have it: humans actually can fly.
Well, one human can fly.
And you better remember that the next time you feel like you can’t do something, because
it’s definitely not as impossible as that, so we guarantee you can do it.
There are only a few people who can truly make history in their chosen sport.
It requires not just talent but dedication too, and when you add in perfect conditions,
you sometimes get something simply spectacular.
This snowboarding World Record came with an amazing platform - a 5 storey high hip jump,
one of the highest ever built.
It allowed the expert Swiss snowboarder Christian Haller to do something which everyone would
have said was impossible until after he’d done it - a 37ft high air on a hip jump.
Just have a look at how high 37feet over the coping actually is - the video perfectly shows
just how superhuman that record-breaking jump actually is.
This is one of those records that we probably won’t see beaten for a very long time.
No matter how good you are at something, there’s a limit to what can be achieved - you know,
the fastest or highest or hottest something can possibly get.
After that, you’re heading into the realms of the impossible.
Some people don’t care if they’re attempting something that should be impossible and they
just do it anyway.
Kyle Wester stepped - or rather, skateboarded - into the impossible and smashed the record
for fastest skateboard speed downhill.
If you’re thinking you can’t really go that fast on a skateboard, think again - his
speed was a terrifying 89.41 miles per hour!
It smashed the previous record of 81.17 miles per hour, which already sounds like an impossible
speed.
So even people who create impossible records aren’t safe - there’s always someone out
there waiting to outdo them.
Doing anything extreme is difficult.
We tend to think of going up into the sky as dangerous and complicated, but it’s just
as hard to go down.
Freediving is possibly the most difficult way to go down - it means diving deep below
the water’s surface without equipment.
You need to be able to hold your breath for a really long time in very difficult conditions,
so only 4 people in recorded history have made it deeper than 560 feet.
Herbert Nitsch is the only person to go much deeper than that.
He can hold his breath for 9 minutes and holds 33 world records for doing the impossible,
including reaching an impossible depth of 830.8 feet underwater.
And it really should have been impossible: he ended up in a coma for 7 days and the doctors
said he would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, but he’s back on his feet now
and proving that even the impossible is sometimes possible, but still really difficult.
There’s a stereotype that people who have a disability, can’t do things nearly as
amazing as people who don’t.
But there are people who couldn’t care less about a stereotype and achieve the impossible
just because they can.
And when I say impossible, I mean impossible for anyone.
This is Aaron Fotheringham and he’s more of an adrenaline junkie than you.
He’s quite clearly one of those people who doesn’t understand the word “can’t.”
And rightly so, because he can obviously do anything he puts his mind to as this video
shows.
This is him in his wheelchair, pulling off a perfect 50 foot front flip.
None of us could do that with the use of every limb on our bodies.
Should that be impossible?
Maybe.
But people like him are here to prove that humans can do anything.
Anything that puts you at the mercy of nature’s elements is incredibly dangerous.
Parachuting is one of those things and it requires an incredible amount of skill to
be able to keep control when you’re being moved by the wind and air currents.
This guy has just got to be supernatural, because wind seems to have no power over him
at all.
He can parachute with perfect elegance onto a seaside cliff and float gently down to find
himself seated on a bench enjoying the scenic view, like it’s no big deal.
He lands in a way that makes it look like he’s been relaxing there for hours, definitely
not like he’s just fallen out of the sky.
We can only dream of that kind of composure, it’s impossible for the rest of us mere
mortals.
Nature is majestic and often untamable.
Humans simply can’t compete with the grandeur found in the natural world, and there are
unconquered parts of the world everywhere you look.
El Capitan in Yosemite National Park was one of those spots, until Alex Hannold came along.
El Capitan is a 3000ft natural wall of granite - it’s smooth and incredibly dangerous and
any rock climbers you would have asked would have said it’s a mountain that’s impossible
to climb without ropes and safety gear.
They were probably right, it was probably impossible, but Alex Hannold didn’t take
it to heart.
He decided to tackle it free solo anyway and he did, in just 3 hours and 56 minutes.
No ropes or safety gear, just a total unwillingness to believe that it wasn’t possible.
It’s gone down in history as possibly the greatest feat in the history of the sport,
and for good reason.
The best sportsmen have highs and lows.
Sometimes they make mistakes that nobody can believe can happen on that level, but sometimes
they have such a great moment nobody can believe what they’ve just seen.
Uruguayan tennis star Pablo Cuevas has a habit of pulling off impossible shots.
In the middle of difficult rallys, he often responds with nearly impossible shots, like
this no-look forehand.
And before you think that was just luck, he’s won points with no-look shots before, like
this one on the first day of Wimbledon 2019.
His no-look winning shot isn’t the only impossible shot, but it might be the most
impressive, especially given the accuracy of it.
It’s not every day that you face an opponent who hardly needs eyes to win a tennis match,
so anyone playing against him must get pretty nervous.
Have you ever noticed that when you get bored, you sometimes go out of your way to make things
difficult for yourself.
People usually do that in little ways, but some people go all out.
This group of YouTubers go by the name How Ridiculous.
They’re widely known for their crazy trickshots, more specifically a stunt they do where they
skip a dart across pallets and still hit a bullseye.
Every time they hit the target, they add a few more pallets… and this time it’s an
incredible 10-pallet dart skip.
Of course, any normal human who finds it difficult to hit a bullseye without also having to navigate
10 pallets would think this would be impossible, but these guys have never heard the word impossible.
They just set everything up perfectly and do it.
Kids are amazing but they’re often underestimated by grown-ups who just can’t believe they
can do something better than an adult.
There are a few kids who have their name in the history books though, proving they can
do extraordinary things.
This kid from India is one of them - he’s an expert limbo skater and he broke the world
record for Farthest Distance Limbo Skating Under Cars at only 6 years old.
The record breaking attempt saw him hold his body parallel to the ground, with his face
just inches from the asphalt as he skated under an incredible 36 Jeeps.
That’s a total distance of more than 213 feet with his body locked into that perfectly
flat position.
I think it’s safe to say most of us couldn’t even stand in that position, never mind skate
with our body like that.
This kid has skills that would definitely be impossible for most of us.