AMAZING FEATS.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 10871, 15 April 1929, Page 6

AMAZING FEATS.

ALEX NYUO KNEW NOT FEAR

A man called Shipwreck Kelly has been touring America performing a novel teat. He spend, eight a a,vs seated in a boatswain’s chair fixed on top of a flagpole. This “human Hag" docs not get much sleep. Now and again he sips a little soup, coltee. water, or warm milk, and spends most of his time reading. JJizarre as such a. performance certainly is, it lias, nevertheless, no startling leatnres. .Now and again, however, the public are thrilled and popular imagination is fired by amazing feats ol foolhardiness; exploits moreover, which are performed ordinarily. either for no profit al all, or for a trifling fee out of all proportion to the fearful risks involved (writes “Hillman” in the Newcastle "eekiv Chronicle).

for example two firemen one cold N’ovembe r day actually climbed the iioft. high Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square, just “for a lark.” When they descended the v were promptly locked up. a cheering mob following them to the police' station.

One man walked on'stilts from his native village in Holland to the Pal i, .exhibition, .sleeping upright at night against trees or houses : but it was an Englishman who set out for this same exhibition from Oporto on his hands and knees. One humori-t walked through London backwards to Wembley; while another eccentric tried to roll himself thither in a barrel.

A Mississippi lumberman named Barton made a journey down the river Thames ha la need on a narrow, slippery nine-foot long hollow tin. Captain .Mills, cousin of VHcount Lascelles, once .swung from a rope ladder under an aeroplane and leaped on the hack of a wild horse.

One of the most exciting pranks ever played was a billiards match which look place some time back between two nnm m a cage of lions. A billiard table was placed in an empty .lions' den. Then the lions wen' let in and they mo veil growling to a corner. The two players—armed with cues weighted so that they might he use'll as weapons—then entered the cage, arid with trembling hands began to play. For a time the lions looked on curiously at an erratic game which was for the nio-t part, misses. Hut when one of the ivory halls fell from the table and rolled towards tlu y crouching “.spectators” the roar that came from the great beasts brought the game to a speedy termination.

One day—merely in order to win the trilling sum of s;—a worker on a New York sky-scraper clambered along a girder projecting high over the street and. reaching the very end. there stood on Ins head.

Harry Young, the Chicago “human Hv.” did not know the meaning of tear. for years he performed midair stunts for the moving pictures. Once lie scaled the outside of a 38storey building blindfold. Some time afterwards, as he was climbing up the face of the Hotel Martmque, in New York, his clawiike; fingers failed him for the first time, and, amid the cries of horror of the massed crowds below, lie fell from the 14th storey, and was instantly killed.