Forums

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
The Straight Dope had a definitive list of Niagaranauts and their various fates, but its website seems to be malfunctioning today.

As the Straight Dope website came back up, the definitive list of Niagaranauts since Annie Taylor first did it in 1901:

• Annie Edson Taylor, a plump 63-year-old schoolteacher who claimed to be in her early 40s. She used a four-and-a-half-foot oak barrel packed with inflated pillows, a mattress, and an anvil (for ballast). Her ride was fairly uneventful, apart from the fact that she plunged roughly 170 feet over the falls in the middle of it; she was fished out 75 minutes after she'd gone in, bruised and shaken but alive. (She reportedly told onlookers, "No one ought ever do that again.") As with many Niagara daredevils, her feat earned her fame but not fortune--she made a meager living afterward posing for pictures with her barrel, and died broke.
  
• Bobby Leach, steel barrel, 1911. The first man to go over the falls, he survived, only to die 15 years later after slipping on an orange peel in Christchurch, New Zealand.
  
• Charles Stephens, oak barrel, 1920. Stephens also brought an anvil for ballast, but he strapped it to his feet. When the barrel hit the water at the base of the falls, the anvil kept going, breaking through the bottom lid and taking most of Stephens with it (his right arm was found still strapped in).
  
• Jean Lussier, 760-pound rubber ball reinforced with steel bands, 1928. Survived.
  
• George Stathakis, 2,000-pound barrel, 1930. The barrel was trapped behind and beneath the falls for more than 14 hours; Stathakis suffocated.
  
• William "Red" Hill Jr., 13 heavy-duty inner tubes lashed together with canvas webbing and fishnet, 1951. Died.
  
• Roger Woodward, 1960. Not technically one of the 15, because he used no barrel and didn't mean to go. Roger was seven years old at the time, and he's still the only person known to have gone over the falls unprotected and live.* (He'd been in a small boat that developed engine problems and capsized upriver.) Observers speculated that he'd survived because his life jacket and light weight brought him back to the surface quickly after the initial plunge.
  
• Nathan Boya, 1,000-pound steel-frame sphere covered in rubber and sheet metal, 1961. Survived.
  
• Karel Soucek, metal and plastic barrel, 1984. Survived. Killed the following year attempting a 180-foot barrel drop into a water tank in front of 45,000 at the Houston Astrodome.
  
• Steve Trotter, two plastic pickle barrels surrounded by inner tubes and covered with a tarp, 1985. Survived; repeated in 1995 with Lori Martin. First coed team.
  
• Dave Munday, aluminum and plastic barrel, 1985. Survived; repeated in 1993 in a converted diving bell. First person to go over twice.
  
• Peter DeBernardi and Geoffrey Petkovich, ten-foot steel barrel, 1989. Survived. First team.
  
• Jessie Sharp, kayak, 1990. Presumed dead, body not found.
  
• Robert Overacker, jet ski, 1995. Died. Rocket-assisted parachute deployed at brink of falls as planned, but wasn't tethered to his back.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030718.html

*Obviously no longer an exclusive honor.