These ten photographs show people who stood on airplane wings, hung from ladders, rode barrels over Niagara Falls and jumped into a river in chains. They date from about 1860 to 1938, and most come from the Library of Congress. Every photograph is in the public domain.
Fearless Freddie on a rope ladder
The Library of Congress titles this “Fearless Freddie,” a Hollywood stunt man on a rope ladder from a plane flown by A.M. Maltrup, about to drop into a car. A Library blog says the caption describes the first successful transfer from a flying plane to a moving car, at 78 miles an hour. Car to plane was more common.
Jersey Ringel on the top wing
Philip “Jersey” Ringel was a barnstormer from Newark, New Jersey, and the biplane carries his name. The Library of Congress dates this print to 1921, when many pilots toured the country in surplus war planes. Ringel died in a plane crash in 1930, on a routine flight, not a stunt.
Lillian Boyer, from waitress to wing walker
Lillian Boyer was a waitress in 1921 when two customers invited her on an airplane ride, and on her second flight she climbed out onto the wing. She trained for five months with Billy Brock, a former World War I pilot and barnstormer. Over her career she made 143 changes from car to plane and 37 parachute jumps.
Annie Taylor, her barrel and a cat
On October 24, 1901, her 63rd birthday, Annie Edson Taylor went over Niagara’s Horseshoe Falls in an oak and iron barrel padded with a mattress. She survived with only a small gash on her head. A cat sent over two days earlier as a test also survived, and the cat on top is probably that one.
Bobby Leach on his steel barrel
Bobby Leach went over Niagara’s Horseshoe Falls in a steel barrel on July 25, 1911, ten years after Annie Taylor. He was the first man to do it and spent months in the hospital. He died in New Zealand in 1926, after slipping on an orange peel and breaking a leg that became infected, according to a newspaper obituary.
Blondin hangs upside down over Niagara
The New York Public Library catalogs this stereo view as Blondin dangling from a wire over the Niagara. Charles Blondin made his first crossing on June 30, 1859, on a rope 1,100 feet long and 160 feet above the water. Later he crossed blindfolded, pushing a wheelbarrow, carrying his manager on his back, and stopping to cook an omelette.
Houdini on the Harvard Bridge, in chains
On April 30, 1908, Harry Houdini jumped into the Charles River from the Harvard Bridge in Boston. A patrolman cuffed his hands behind his back, with a chain running to a collar around his neck. The Boston Globe estimated about 20,000 spectators, and Houdini surfaced after 40 seconds with the shackles in his hands.
Johnnie Reynolds, the human fly
A caption says Johnnie Reynolds, “human and daredevil extraordinary,” picked one of Washington’s coldest days for his hair-raising stunts. Nicknamed the human fly, he was also photographed on a high cornice in 1917 and on the Times-Herald Building flagpole in 1924. This handstand dates to the early 1920s.
Clara Lee on the Wall of Death
Clara Lee rode a motorcycle around the inside of a circular wooden wall at the Sydney Easter Show in 1938, with the crowd looking down from the rim. The State Library of New South Wales says she and Virginia Dodge were the first women in Australia to ride the Wall of Death. They arrived in Sydney in February 1938.
Lincoln Beachey races Barney Oldfield
Lincoln Beachey, in the plane, races Barney Oldfield, in the car. The two raced each other across the country in 1913 and 1914, and the winner changed from race to race. Beachey died in March 1915, when his monoplane’s wings collapsed in a dive over San Francisco Bay.
