FOOLISH ADVENTURE

Hokitika Guardian, 26 October 1928, Page 2

FOOLISH ADVENTURE

OVER NIAGARA IN A BALL. According to a Central News telegram from Toronto, published in the London Daily Telegraph, John A. Laussier, of Springfield, Alassaclxusetts, recently went over the Falls of Niagara in a huge rubber hall. He chose the Horseshoe Falls, on the Canadian side, where . the water drops a 'sheer 160 feet into the boiling torrent, for his foolhardy adventure. The telegram stated: The rubber ball has been recovered from the river below the falls. When Laussier was taken from it he was found to he unconscious. Doctors are working oh him in the effort to bring him back to life. Thousands of persons had assembled to witness the attempt, and as the ball gradually gathered speed in the current, and was thrown hither and thither by the foaming waters, they held their breath. At one moment it would Ibe sweeping along in the main stream, then it would seem as if it was to be cast up on the bank. It was lost to view for a time in the dense spray, but shortly afterwards it. was seen tossing about in the cataract. For a while the ball could not be reached, but eventually Hill, an expert life-saver, was affile to reach it. He towed the ball to the Canadian side, thus escaping the United States police, who had threatened tc> arrest Laussier on his arrival, oi those, connected with his attempt if lie perished ” In .an earlier telegram foreshadowing the attempt it was stated that the walls of the hall were three feet thick, and space inside six feet in diameter. This would give a total diameter of 12 feet. Let into the wall, were 32 compartments with oxygen in them. Laussier intended to sit erect inside the hall while it was buffeted about by the torrent. He has engaged a man named William Hill, said to he the only man on the American continent who holds three lifesaving medals, to haul him out* when he had gone over the falls. So far as is known this is only the second human being who has gone over the falls and survived to tell the tale. In 1886 and 1887 an Englishman, Carlisle D. Graham, achieved the feat'in a buoy-shaped barrel, and (ilaimed to have done so again in 1889.

Several persons have tried to swim the boiling rapids below the falls, but most of them have failed or perished. The most notable of these was Captain Webb, who was drowned in the attempt in 1883.