Shortly after being dragged to shore and cut out of the custom-made oak barrel that she’d ridden over Niagara Falls, Annie Taylor told the press, “If it was with my dying breath, I would caution anyone against attempting that feat…” It was on October 24, 1901 – her 63rd birthday – that Taylor packed both herself and a mattress into the wooden vessel and became the first person to ever stunt drop over Horseshoe Falls (all such stunts are performed on the Canadian falls due to the jagged rocky hostility of the American ones). Arriving on shore with a gash on her head, but otherwise intact, the aging schoolteacher patiently awaited the riches and fame that she had been certain would follow her (and her outsized three-quarter-life crisis) over the pummeling torrents of icy water. Alas, Taylor would spend the last 20 years of her Earthly existence hustling pocket change from tourists who, in exchange for a meager fee, could take a picture with the pioneering daredevil and her sidekick, the barrel. It wasn’t just her act of daring that was largely ignored – it was also those admonishing words she had spoken to journalists.

10 years after Taylor unknowingly opened up a new frontier of falls stunting, English circus performer Bobby Leach, who had already made multiple trips through the Niagara river’s whirlpool rapids, became the second non-suicidal person to purposely careen, unguided, over the perilous 173-foot drop and into the river below. Leach survived the fall, but still managed to break both knees and fracture his jaw. Though he was able to parlay his stunt into a successful touring career, his death was as inauspicious as Anne Taylor’s life – he broke his leg slipping on an orange peel and succumbed to the resulting infection. Wah wah waaah.

The next person to challenge the falls was Charles Stephens, whose ill-fated 1920 journey ended with the removal of a single severed arm from the splintered mess of Russian oak that had once been the British barber’s protective barrel. Don’t feel bad though – both Bobby Leach and Niagara River boater William “Red” Hill, Sr. warned Stephens that his untested barrel was likely to double as his coffin. Sure enough, the anvi-lcum-ballast that Stephens had attached to his feet tore right through the bottom of the cask, ripping Stephens, who was secured into an arm harness, into three distinct pieces.

Stupid and tragic as it was, Stephens’ death had a bright side – the next brave-hearted, fool-headed Niagara daredevil could look at that gross, severed arm and reflect on how not to go over the falls. In 1928, Frenchman Jean Lussier took his reflections beyond the obvious conclusion of “test your friggin’ barrel” and decided to take on Horseshoe Falls in a giant rubber ball. 6 feet in diameter, with a still frame, 32 liner inner tubes and a heavy rubber bottom to prevent rolling, the ball cost Lussier his entire life savings, but earned its keep on July 4, 1928 when it successfully bore its intrepid French cargo over the watery precipice.

In 1930, an obsessive mystic name George Strathkis attempted a barrel ride over Niagara. He survived the drop but suffocated to death when his vessel became trapped behind the falls. Oops.

Remember Red Hill, Sr., who, along with Bobby Leach, called-out Charles Stephens for being a careless idiot? Well Red was a local celebrity, known both for rescuing countless careless swimmers and boaters from the Niagara River’s dastardly current, and for several well-publicized jaunts through the whirlpool rapids. Red had a son – William “Red” Hill, Jr. Red Sr. was never goofy enough to attempt a falls stunt, and died of a heart attack in 1942. Nine years later, though, Red Jr. decided that the best way to honor his father’s memory would be a madcap jaunt over the falls. Eschewing wood, steel and common sense for inner tubes, canvas webbing and outright insanity, Red, Jr. built “The Thing,” a stack of inflatable rubber rings bound together with canvas and fish netting. With a crowd, including his wife and 10-year-old daughter, looking on, Red, Jr. slid inside his maniac tube and rode the river over the falls. The next morning, after Red’s mangled corpse was discovered near the Maid of the Mist boat dock, the Niagara Parks commission declared falls stunting illegal.

Like that ever stopped anybody.

Little is known about Nathan Boya who, in the summer of 1961, showed up unannounced at the falls with a giant reinforced rubber-and-metal orb called the “Plunge-O-Sphere.” Boya took the plunge, came out unscathed, paid a $113 dollars in fines and went on his way, saying only that his trip had not been a “stunt,” but rather something he needed to do. Years later, a family member of the Caliguiri Brothers, the owners of a New York fixtures company that helped design the Plunge-O-Sphere, reported that the native Bronxite had performed the feat to impress his girlfriend. Given this information, I’d move the Plunge-O-Sphere from the middle of the “Necessity” circle to the portion of the Venn diagram where “Stunt” and “Necessity” overlap (but, obviously, still completely outside of the “Revenge” circle).

By the 1970s, the excitement surrounding courageous Niagara plunges had dwindled. More folks survived than not; modern technology continually offered better and better solutions to the problems of air supply, impact and river currents; and the success of survival only meant being pulled from a barrel or bathysphere in handcuffs. A full 12 years after Boya’s necessity, a Canadian named Karl Soucek, who billed himself as “The Last Niagara Daredevil,” survived a trip over the falls, resulting in the confiscation of his homemade barrel. In 1985, 22-year-old Stephen Trotter became the youngest person to live through a falls stunt (and, later, the only probable member of the 172-Foot-Drop Club: he repeated his stunt 10 years later, this time with his girlfriend riding shotgun). 1989, however, saw the first two-person trip over the falls, when two Canadian men, Peter DeBernardi and Jeffrey Petkovitch, took the plunge in a giant, handcrafted steel barrel. Additionally, Canadian John David Munday took on, and survived, the falls twice: once in 1985 in a homemade barrel and once in 1993 in a converted diving bell.

And that’s it for successful and/or mentally competent trips over Niagara’s Horseshoe Falls. June 5th 1990 saw Tennessean Jesse Sharp steer a kayak over the falls. Yeah – his body was never recovered. Then in 1995 man named Robert Overcracker jet-skied himself over the brink of the falls. To his credit, he had a parachute, and planned to drift softly down into the river. To his detriment, the friend who prepared the parachute forgot to tether it into Overcracker’s pack. *blushing shrug.* The last person to tumble over was an unemployed Michigan man named Kirk Jones, who successfully blundered over the cataract without any sort of barrel or life preserver or even floaties. Jones’ testimony as to stunt vs. suicide attempt flip-flopped several times, though his family remains convinced that the act was a courageous spectacle rather than a gratuitously awesome goodbye, cruel world. The good news is that Jones has a job now – stuntman at the Texas-based Toby Tyler circus.

Phew.

The stunts described above were performed alternately by professionals, morons and insane people. You probably shouldn’t try any of them unless you really, really want to.

If you graduated from high school, there’s a good chance that, at some point, you had your physics acumen tested by way of an egg drop competition. So, you suffocated your egg in old bubble wrap and foam insulation, wrangled a mess of Popsicle sticks into the approximate shape of a box, Koosh-balled the hell out of the whole business and left its fate to gravity’s butter fingers. The brass-balled Niagara daredevils attempted similar feats – except they were the eggs, and while it was blind, stupid courage that brought them to the lip of the falls, it was their makeshift barrels, boats and bathyspheres that ultimately had to carry them over. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 75 years’ worth of stuntmen, performers and sailors challenged the Niagara River before anyone dreamed of taking on the falls.

When people look at a giant waterfall, they instinctually want to send crap over it. Visit Niagara and then tell me you didn’t wish you had a dilapidated schooner full of wild animals to drop over the roaring cataract. I use that example because it’s totally what you wished, but also because in 1827, the owners of the only three Niagara-area hotels had the same collective dream (although their vision also involved lots of flying “No Vacancy” marquees and airborne dollar signs slam-dunking cash wads through money hoops). After procuring a condemned boat called the Michigan, the intrepid hoteliers began rabidly advertising that the “pirate Michigan,” along with a cargo of “animals of the most ferocious kind, such as Panthers, Wild Cats and Wolves,” would plunge over the falls on September 8. Word spread and people gathered. On the publicized date, a crowd of 10,000 onlookers watched as one buffalo, two raccoons, one dog and one goose road the Michigan over Horseshoe Falls (two bears were placed on the boat, but escaped into the river before the vertical drop). Only the duck survived.

The first Niagara daredevils, who may have had the recently pancaked buffalo in mind, avoided the actual falls, preferring instead to take on the surrounding rapids, gorges and whirlpools. Beginning in 1829, when famed stunt jumper Sam Patch (AKA “The Yankee Leaper”) successfully completed a 125-foot feet-first leap into the Niagara River, performers and wannabes from all corners of palookaville began squaring off with the area’s most treacherous geography, and the falls became an incidental backdrop to a vast culture of thrilling death defiance. Swimmers challenged the rushing river waters upstream from the falls. Along the river’s banks, divers flung themselves from makeshift ladders and platforms. Stuntmen and sailors attempted to steer boats and converted barrels through the treacherous downstream whirlpool rapids. But in 19th century Niagara, amid all the varied calculated showmanship and reckless heroism, one type of act reigned supreme– the gorge-spanning tightrope walk.

Of the dozen or so high-wire performers who balanced their way across the 160-foot-drop between tenuously strung cables and a definite, tangible fate (most on foot, though in 1869 J.F. “Professor” Jenkins crossed on a velocipede [all I can picture is Professor Frink riding Mr. Garrison’s IT]), none compared to the nimble Charles Blondin, AKA The Great Blondin, and his well-muscled, business-savvy rival William Hunt, AKA The Great Farini.

The Great Blondin (real name Jean-Francois Gravelet), a French-born acrobat, arrived in Niagara in 1859 with the intention of crossing the gorge on a tightrope. After stringing a 3 ½-inch-thick, 1,100-foot-long rope across the canyon, the svelte, mustachioed performer completed his goal with seemingly effortless aplomb, and immediately began working to up the ante. Over the next two years, Blondin performed a cornucopia of increasingly absurd acts, all while perched high above the Niagara River’s icy water and pummeling currents. He crossed blindfolded. He crossed on stilts. He crossed carrying his manager on his back. He crossed with a portable stove, sat down in the middle of the rope and cooked and ate an omelet.

During the second year of Blondin’s success, a new talent arrived in Niagara. New Yorker William Hunt had abandoned his family, his girlfriend and his name to become the high-wire extraordinaire known as The Great Farini (an unapologetic bid to cash-in on the erotic mystery of a European pedigree). Strong as moonshine and focused as a Ford Focus, Farini had one goal – out-perform Blondin. For his first stunt in Niagara, Farini high-wired halfway across the gorge, used a second rope to descend all the way down to the waiting Maid of the Mist, enjoyed a glass of wine (how European), climbed 160 feet back up to the tightrope and completed his crossing… only to re-cross minutes later, blindfolded and wearing baskets on his feet. Whereas Blondin ended his performances by humbly asking the audience for donations, Farini preceded his stunts with solicited sponsorship deals and publicity campaigns that guaranteed larger crowds and bigger profits. Farini matched Blondin stunt for stunt, carrying a local woman across the falls after Blondin piggybacked his manager, and even one-upping the omelet act by schlepping a washtub out on the line, lowering the basin down into the river, hoisting it back up and washing a dozen handkerchiefs in it. On several occasions, he called Blondin out, directly challenging him to mano a mano competition. The Frenchman never responded.

Eventually, Blondin moved to England where he became a respected acrobatic performer. Farini followed him and ultimately emerged the more successful man, touring much of Europe as an acrobat before eventually teaming up with P.T. Barnum to work behind the scenes as a circus coordinator. Interestingly, despite Farini’s long and varied career, it’s still Blondin whose name is synonymous with Niagara high-wire acts. As they say – life’s a bitch and then you yell at it until you get throat cancer and die a prolonged and agonizing death.

At the dawn of the 20th century, the ropes and platforms and fearsome freestyle strokes of daredevils past would be overshadowed by a new frontier in insane, ridiculous name-making – the journey over the falls.

(Continued on Friday)

Niagara Falls also has five separate year-round haunted houses because, well, it’s a huge, majestic waterfall. The house with the most tourist acclaim (based on TripAdvisor.com’s user ratings) is Nightmares: Fear Factory, where Canada’s primary export – fear – is rendered from the phantasmagoric dreams of children who saw their parents murdered, sweetened with real Maple syrup and shipped off to Africa. Nightmare’s prolific brochures and advertisements lure in the tourists (myself included) using three gimmicks:

1. A vague back story about a grumpy old coffin maker who used to operate out of Nightmare’s building. Kids made fun of him, and when he tried to shoo them away, somehow a coffin fell on him and he died. Now his ghost haunts the building or something.

2. A Splash Mountain-inspired offer of two mid-attraction keepsake photographs taken during the house’s most terrifying moments.

3. A safe word (“Nightmares”) to shout if and when you want to prematurely back out – an option that, according to the ads, has been taken advantage of by more than 100,000 paying guests.

My experience as it relates to the gimmicks:

1. I still don’t know what this almost-certainly apocryphal tale has to do with anything. The story suggests a cantankerous ghost, bloodied coffins and a vengeful agenda. Also, maybe an America’s Funniest Home Videos tape where the coffin topples over, or a Benny Hill sketch where the guy chases the kids. Nightmares: Fear Factory is a pitch black maze where startling sound effects give way to screaming actors shooting pressurized air at your genitals.

2. The closest thing I experienced to the freak-out visible from space that they portray in the ads was my reaction to Nightmare’s 13.95 CAD admission fee, and even then I just quietly wet my pants while sighing. Granted, in my picture, I was nervously laughing while cowering my way through the maze, holding my girlfriend in front of me like some sort of fright plow. Needless to say, I didn’t pay the extra scratch for the photo. (If you’re that desperate for it, just picture a quivering Shaggy desperately clinging to a stoic Ellen Ripley.)

3. I don’t know. I bugged the guy at the box office to give me more information about the chicken tally, but all he could tell me was that it spanned 26 years of bok-bok-b’gokking wieners. I can’t imagine that many people being inconsolably terrified of a dark hallway that they paid handsomely to grope their way down. The x-factor is drunkenness – the 600,000 gallons of water that drop over Horseshoe Falls every second have nothing on the gross volume of alcohol consumed by college-aged tourists every hour. 90,000 of these so-called chickens were probably just triumphantly declaring their location. “Nightmares! WHOOOO!”

Unrelated Note: If you look at Niagara Falls, Ontario as Canada’s perception of what leisure-seeking Americans value, there’s nothing more telling than the giant sculpture of Frankenstein’s monster eating a hamburger. Seriously, take a look AFTER THE JUMP!

Wednesday: 100% more barrels

Weird Thing Thing Th-th-thing Things! I just got home from Niagara Falls, Canada and have plenty of legends to share with you. Most are awesome, and a couple are even not gross fabrications. But before I get to the good stuff, I need to check up on some facts and catch up on some Caprica. Until Wednesday’s information-stuffed edu-palooza of falls facts and historical japery, please accept these ramblings on some Weird Things-relevant Canadian miscellanea that I encountered:

Apparently, nothing complements an enduring wonder of nature like creepy waxen celebrity models. The Ripley-owned Louis Tussaud’s waxworks are here, as are the Movieland Wax Museum of the Stars and the Rock Legends Wax Museum. The clear winner, though, if even just for its esoteric morbidity, is the Criminals Hall of Fame Wax Museum.

The heart of a standard wax gallery’s charm is, of course, physical recognition – artistic skill is represented through the artist’s ability to create lifelike facsimiles of ubiquitous public figures. The Criminals Hall of Fame clearly understood this principle enough to know that, given their artist’s ability, it might be best to stick to the second- and third-stringers. In other words – name recognition. The downside is that the well-known criminals – Al Capone, John Wilkes Boothe, Charles Manson – all end up looking like the same dead-eyed off-the-shelf mannequin in a fly-by-night Halloween store’s window display. Even Hitler comes off as a Fuhrer-inspired SS surplus emporium floor model. The upside is that you get to see what are probably the only existing wax replicas of halfway-obscure, all-the-way-bitchin’ ne’erdowells like Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory (bonus: this display features a gratuitous, but lovingly sculpted, naked tit) and 19th century American serial killer H.H. Holmes.
Sure – some of the costumes were probably bought wholesale from a bankrupted Olde Time Photo business, and yes, many of the wigs look to have been stripped off inherited taxidermy, but the museum does a good job of varying up the criminal element, such that cowboy fans, gangster aficionados and serial killer buffs will all find something to enjoy. In particular, the Mafia displays have extensive information placards. Also, it’s the cheapest wax museum in the area… and where else are you going to see a life-sized wax statue of Timothy McVeigh sharing a jail cell with a one-to-one scale model of Ted Kaczynski?

Unrelated Note: Saw that the Lundy’s Lane Best Western has a delightful little restaurant called “Windows on the Lane,” with (doy!) floor-to-ceiling windows boasting views of the aforementioned lane. Sights include a Wendy’s, a paint shop and an adult video store. If they really want to make people happy, put the windows on the adult video store so the shiftless, defeated pervert of a counter clerk can stare out of the glass and, for at least one moment, revel in the unobtainable beauty of a mid-priced corporate hotel franchise.