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N0KFQ > TODAY 23.06.15 17:42l 61 Lines 2864 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 59428_N0KFQ
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Jun 23
Path: IW8PGT<CX2SA<N0KFQ
Sent: 150623/1532Z 59428@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.63
2013
Wallenda makes Grand Canyon crossing on high wire
On this day in 2013, 34-year-old aerialist Nik Wallenda becomes
the first person to walk a high wire across the Little Colorado
River Gorge near Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. Wallenda
wasn't wearing a safety harness as he made the quarter-mile
traverse on a 2-inch-thick steel cable some 1,500 feet above the
gorge. In June of the previous year, Wallenda, a member of the
famous Flying Wallendas family of circus performers, became the
first person to walk a tightrope over Niagara Falls.
Born in Sarasota, Florida, in 1979, Wallenda is part of a family
that traces its history as circus performers back to the
Austro-Hungarian empire in the late 18th century. His
great-grandfather, Karl, who was born in Germany in 1905,
developed an aerial act with several other performers in Europe
in the early 1920s. By the late 1920s, the group, which
eventually came to be known as the Flying Wallendas, was
performing in America with Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey
Circus. In 1947, Karl Wallenda invented the seven-person chair
pyramid, a feat performed on a tightrope. After being performed
for many years, the pyramid proved fatal in 1962, when two men
died and one of Karl's sons was paralyzed when the trick went
wrong. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Karl turned his attention
to "sky walks" between buildings and across stadiums on a high
wire. In 1978, he fell to his death at age 73 while walking a
cable between two structures in Puerto Rico.
Nik Wallenda learned to walk on a wire as a young boy, and made
his professional debut as an aerialist at age 13. He went on to
set a number of Guinness World Records, including the longest
tightrope crossing on a bicycle and the highest eight-person
tightrope pyramid. In 2011, Wallenda hung from a high-flying
helicopter above Branson, Missouri, by his teeth. That same year,
he and his mother successfully completed the high-wire walk in
Puerto Rico that had killed Karl Wallenda.
On June 15, 2012, Nik Wallenda became the first person to walk
directly over Niagara Falls on a high wire. He crossed an
1,800-foot-long, 7-ton wire from the U.S. side of the falls to
the Canadian side at a height of around 200 feet in about 25
minutes. Because the event was televised around the world,
broadcast officials required the famous funambulist to wear a
safety tether in case he fell.
The following June, Wallenda made his Grand Canyon traverse.
Wearing jeans and a T-shirt and holding a 43-pound balancing
pole, he prayed out loud as he walked untethered across a
1,400-foot-long, 8.5-ton cable suspended 1,500 feet above the
Little Colorado River. It was the highest walk of his career, and
he completed it in just less than 23 minutes.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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