GAMBLING WITH DEATH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20152, 12 January 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

GAMBLING WITH DEATH.

EXTRAORDINARY FEATS.

DEEDS OF FOOLHARDINESS.

HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPES. BILLIARDS IN LION'S DEN. A man called Shipwreck Kelly has been touring some big cities' in America performing a novel " stunt." Ho spends eight days seated in a boatswain's chair fixed on top of a flagpole! This " human flag " docs not get much sleep. Now and again the man sips a little soup, coffee, water, or warm milk, and spends most of his time in reading. Bizarre as such a performance certainly is, it has, nevertheless, no startling features. One may admire the man's endurance—but Kelly would appear to risk nothing more than an attack of influenza, according to a writer in an English journal. Now and again, however, the public are thrilled and popular imagination is fired hy amazing feats of foolhardiness; exploits, moreover, which are performed ordinarily, either for no profit, at all or for a trifling fee out of all proportion to the fearful risks involved. Indeed, it wouid appear that these venturesome public entertainers take an uncanny dolight in danger for its own sake, and live 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 steeple, or streak through spaco on a red-hot motor-cycle or car. 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 Falls exercises a lure that the foolhardy have not always been able to resist. Bobby Leach went safely over the Horseshoe Falls in a steel barrel, and Blondin crossed on a tight-rope pushing a man in a barrow. But of the number who died attempting the almost impossible one need only mention Captain Webb, who was dashed to pieces trying to " swim " tho rapids, and the Hull hairdresser, who, a few years ago, went in a barrel over the boiling waters to his death.

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 flames. 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 areoplane is a dangerous business. Not long ago a flying man was making stunt parachute descents above a field 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 lie had swooped down 150 ft. of the 800 ft. drop before the wind caught and opened his parachute. lie came swinging through space like the pendulum of a clock and reached the ground on his head, with his legs swinging in the air. This should have been enough for the most intrepid " stunler." Nothing daunted, however, the cut and shaken performer at once proceeded to amaze -tlve spectators by walking on the wings of an aeroplane in full flight. Pranks " For a Lark." While making his first parachute descent once another young airman lost his grip of the ring, which ho should have pulled to open the parachute, and, unable to find it again, shot down through the air to his death. The world is full of fools; And lie who none would viewMust shut himself within a cove, And break his mirror, too. Nevertheless, foolish as many people may be on occasion, they should scarcely care to follow the example of the two firemen who, one cold November _ day, actually climbed the 145 ft. high Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square. " just for a lark." Imagine the thrill of these daring jokers >is they stood on Nelson s hat and looked down on the gaping crowds below! When the two men descended from their dizzy climb, they were promptly locked up, a cheering mob following them to the police station. They were accused of climbing the column while in a state of intoxication ; but the magistrate held that if they had not been perfectly sober, they could not have accomplished the perilous feat. He bound the prisoners over not to risk their lives again for a month. One man walked on stilts from his native village in Holland to the Paris Exhibition, sleeping upright at right against trees or houses; but it was an Englishman who set out for this same exhibition from Oporto on his hands and knees. One humorist walked through London backward to the Empire Exhibition at Wembley; while another eccentric tried to roll himself thither in a barrel. Other Exciting Adventures. A Mississippi lumberman named Barton made a journey down the river Thames balanced on a narrow, slippery nine-foot long hollow tin. Captain Mills, cousin of 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 ever played was a billiards match which took place some time back between two men in a cage of lions. A billiard table was placed in an empty lion's den. Then the lions were let in and they moved growling to a corner. Tho two players—armed with cues, weighted so that they might bo used as weapons —then entered the cage, and with trembling hands began to play. For a time tho lions looked on curiously at an erratic game, which was for the most part misses. But when one of the ivory balls fell from the table and rolled toward the crouching " spectators," tho roar that came from the great beasts brought tho game to a speedy termination. One day—merely in order to win the trifling sum cf 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 bis head.

Harry Young, the Chicago " human fly," did not know the moaning of fear. For years he performed mid-air " stunts " for tho moving pictures. Onco he scaled the outside of a 38 storey building blindfolded! Some time afterward, as ho was climbing up tho face of tho Hotel Martinique, in New York, his claw-liko fingers failed him for tho first time, and, amid the cries of horror of the massed crowds below, ho fell from tho 14th storey and was instantly killed. Marvellous Climbing Feat.

A remarkable climbing feat was performed a few years before the war by a Vienna steeplejack named Pirchor. The occasion was the birthday of tho Austrian Emperor, and Pirchor, using no climbing irons or similar devices, climbed to the top of the great gilt cross that crowns the summit of the famous St. Stephen's Cathedral.

Tho climber made his way up tho lightning rod from tho very base of tho cathedral tower in the square, and the police and soldiers, powerless to interfere, and a great multitude watched his progress in tense sileno- Tho height of tho tower is 450ffc., aud ?trcher was aloft about two and a-half hours. When ho reached the top of tho big gilt cross he placed thereon a flag and a garland of flowers..