Wheelbarrels Full of Nerves: Daredevils in History

A few weeks ago I went to New York (post on Rigolleto coming soon!), and while there I went to an exhibit on BRAINS. I learned that there are just a wreck of nerves in the human brain. But I think some people have more nerves than others, and these are called DAREDEVILS. And they do cool stuff.

I fancy myself as pretty cool, and though I have a lot of synapses in my brain, I think i'm only average when it comes to nerves. I've done some brave stuff in my life--when I was a kid my friend @bobby and I used to jump across a raging gorge during rainstorms...well, it seemed that way, though when I went home last time and saw this gorge, it seemed like more of a drainage ditch. But it was still pretty tight.

But some dudes just go crazy with their feats of mental and physical fearlessness. I think one of the coolest things is when someone goes over niagara falls in a wheelbarrel. Sometimes when I was a kid, my sister and I would play EARTHQUAKE, where one would get in a cardboard box and the other would shake it really hard. I think this is probably like going over niagara falls in a wheelbarrel, but much dryer and safer. Can you imagine--its like a 1,000 foot drop in churning water?? Apparently some people have survived, though. Just like our space adventures, people first send animals over the falls. In 1827 a group of hotel owners put on a publicity stunt in which they bought a big old boat to send over the falls. They wanted to put "wild beasts of the forest, such as a panther" in the boat, but they ended up just putting in a buffalo, some bears, and a goose in the boat. Turns out the bears escaped before the falls, and the goose survived. Sorry, @jennings, but the buffalo gave his life to science.

In terms of people going over the falls, a bunch have tried and some of them survived. Presumably most of them stuffed their barrels full of pillows or something. Some guy names Karel Soucek survived a trip down the falls in a barrel, but then he tried to recreate it at the Housten Dome by falling into a water tank, but he missed the tank and got scwhangled. D'oh!

I think those people that walked on the wings of biplanes are pretty cool too. I don't really understand how they stayed up there--you'd think the wind pressure would knock them off the plane and into the wild blue yonder. Sometimes I like to stick my hand out the window of a fast moving car and ride the airwaves, and it seems like if my whole body was on top of the car, I'd be pushed away...and that's just going like 65 mph, much less going airplane speed. Never underestimate daredevils, though.

I think tightrope walking is cool too (is that why they call it TIGHT rope walking lol?). It just seems so scary. These hippies used to tightrope walk between trees on campus, which seemed hard, except they only fell like 3 feet. Imagine doing that above a cliff! Or niagara falls lol?.

Basejumping is cool too. There's a youtube video of a guy basejumping off of a church steeple that's like 235 feet high. That's intense. I sometimes like to recreate basejumps using army men and plastic bags...but i'm glad i'm not the army man! (though it'd be fun if I knew it would work)

Anyway, I think daredevils rule, even if i'm too scared to try these stunts. They're probably key to humanity's future, since it'll take a bundle of nerves to brave the scary stuff that'll probably happen when the sun explodes.