GAMBLING WITH DEATH.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5404, 25 March 1929, Page 4

GAMBLING WITH DEATH.

DEEDS OF FOOLHARDINESS*

A man called Shipwreck Kelly has been touring some big cities in Am®" vica performing a novel “stunt.” He spends eight days seated in a boatswain’s chair fixed °n top of a flag" pole ! T.his “Human flag” dotes not yc;t much sleep. Now and again the man sips a little .soup, coffee, water, or warm milk, and spends most of his time in leading. Bizarre as such a performance certainly is, it has, neverIheless, no startling features. One may admire the man’s endurance — but Kelly would appear to risk nothing more than an attack of influenza,.

Now and again, however, the public are thrilled and popular imagination is fired by amazing feats of.foolhardiness ; exploits, moreover, which are performed ordinarily, either for no profit at all or for a trifling fee out of al) proportion to the fearful risk involved, Indeed, it would appear that these venturesome public entertainers take an uncanny delight in danger for its own sakg. and l' ;ve their life at its fullest only when they are most perilously dodging, death. It is probably good) fun to hang one’s cap on a high church Siteeple, or streak through space cin a red-hot motor-cycle or ear. And the daring bank employee was certainly not bored by monotony who, during his lunch hour, cycled round the narrow parapet near the roof of his 25-storey bank to the terror of the assembled, multitude below. THRILLS AT NIAGARA FALLS. The Niagara Kails exercises a, lure, that the foolhardy have not always been able to resist. Booby Loach wqnt safely over the Horseshoe Falls in a steel barrel a nd Bjondin crossed on tight-rope pushing a man in a, barorw. But of the; number who died l attempting the almost impossible, one need only mention Captain Webb, who was dashed to pieces tryipg to “swim” the rapi tfe, and the Hull hairdresser who, a few years ago, went in a barrel over the boiling waters to his death. STUNTS IN THE: AIR. Despite its greatest danger, air “stunting” remains a feature of aerial pageants. While two. aviators were making spectacular descents, 4000 ft high, their ’planes collided, and, locked together, the wrecked machines burst into flamers. As the ’planes hurtled down through the air like meteors the two pilots made daring leaps with their parachutes. Fortune favoured them; the silk bags opened and caught the air, and the men sailed downward! through nearly a mile of space and reached the ground in safety. Descending by parachute from an aeroplane is a dangerous business. Not long ago ‘a flying man was making stunt parachute descents above a fiejW packed with people. He had only begun his drop when his head' Struck a passing 'plane travelling at the rate of 65 miles an hour, and he had swooped down 150 ft of the 800f,t drop before the; wind caught and opened! his .parachute. He came swinging through space like the pendulum' of a clock, and reached the ground on his head, with his legs swinging in tfte air. This should have been enough for the most intrepid: “stunttjv.” Nothing daunted, however, the cut a,nd shaken performer at once proceoded to amaze the spectators by walking bn. the wings of an aeroplane hi full flight. While making his first parachute descent another young airman lost, his grip of the ring, which he should have pulled to open the parachute, and, unable to find it again* shot down through the air to his. death. PRANKS “ FOR A. LARK.” The world is full of fools ; And he whom none would) vie.w Mast shut himself within a cove, And break his mirror, too.

Nevertheless*, foolish as, many people may be on occasion, they would scarcely pare to follow the example of the two firemen who, one Cold November flay, actually climbed the 145 ft high Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square, “just for a lorik.” Imagine tbo; thrill of these daring jokers as they stood ou Nelson’s hat and looked down on the gaping pnowd below I When the two men descended from their dizzy climb they were .promptly locked up, a cheering mob following them to the police station. They accused of climbing the column while in a. state of intoxication ; but the magistrate held that if they- .had not been perfectly sober they tiotild. not have accomplished the perilous fe;at. He bound the prisoners over not to ri.-k their lives again far a month. A man walked on stilts from his native village in Holland to the Paris Exhibition, sleeping upright at night against trees or houses.. But, it was an Englishman who set out for thiti fame exhibition from. Oporto on hi® hands and knees. One humourist walked through London backward to the Empire Ex.hibitiotn at, Wembley; whil.-t another eccentric tried, to roll himself thither in, a barrel.

OTHER EXCITING ADVENTURES’A Mississippi lumberman named Barton made a journey down the River Th amqs' balanced on a narrow, slippery nine-foot long holleiw tin. Captain Mills, cousin to Viscount Lascelles, once swung from a rope ladder under an aeroplane and: leaped 'on the back of a wild horse.

One of the most exciting pranks, oxer played was a billiards match which took place some time back between two men in a cage of li'osis. A billiard table was placed in an emptfj lion’s den. Then the lions were le,t in, and they moved growling, to. the corner. The two players, anrned; with cues, weighted so that they' might be used as weapons, then enjberegl the cage, and with trembling hands began, to play. For a. time the lions IC’ok.bd on curiously at an erratic gjame, which .was fvr tlic most pa it misses. But when one of the ivory balls fe.ll from the table and rolled towards the crouclfring “spectators,” the ro?»r that camci from the great beasts Inttught the game to a speedy termirfatlon.

One day—merely in order to wib the trifling sum of ss— a worker 'on a New York skyscraper clambered along a, girder projecting high over the street and, reaching the very end), there stood on his head.

Hairy Young, the Chicago "human fly,” did not know the meaning, of fear. For he performed mid-air “i.'tunts” for the moving pictures. Once he scaled the outside of a 38storey building blindfolded! Shme time afterwards, as he was ejimbim, up the face of the Hotel Martinique, in New York, his claw-like flngeys failed him for the first time, and, amid the cries of horror of the massed crowd below, he fell from the fourteenth. storey and was killed instantly. A remarkable climbing feat was performed a few years, before the war by a Vienna steeplejack named Pitcher. The occasion was the birthday of the Austrian Emperor, and Pirc,her, using no climbing irons or similar devices, climbed to the top of the great gilt cross that crowns the summit of. the famous St. Stephejn’s Cathedral. T,lie climber made his way up the lightning rod from the very base of the cathedral tower jn the square, and the police and soldiers, powerless to interfere, and a grqat. multitude, watched his progress in tense silence. The height pf the tower is 450 ft, and Pitcher was aloft about two h.ours and a hajf. When he reached the top he placed thereon a flag and a garland of flowers.