LURE OF NIAGARA FALLS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18613, 8 July 1930, Page 9

LURE OF NIAGARA FALLS.

Another Foolish Adventure BARREL-PASSENGER MISSING. United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright VANCOUVER, July 6. George Stathakis, professional chef, and self-styled Greek philosopher, crawled into an oak barrel, which he got friends to seal, and set him adrift over the Niagara Falls. They watched the barrel bounce into the misty curtain, but it did not reappear. Presumably it met the same fate as George Stevens, the Bristol barber, who ten years ago undertook to conquer the falls, but all that was ever found -was one of his arms and a few bits of the barrel. Mrs Annie Taylor, who went over 29 years ago, subsequently died of old age. Bobbie Leach duplicated the feat in 1911 in a steel barrel. He returned to his home in New Zealand, where he die*d from the effects of skidding on a banana peel. TRAGIC END OF JOURNEY. SUFFOCATION IN BARREL. United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright (Received July 7, 7. p.m.) VANCOUVER, July 7. A message from Niagara Falls (Ontario) states that the barrel in which George Stathakis, of Buffalo, New York, attempted to navigate the rapids above Niagara Falls on Saturday, and plunged over the cataract, was recovered to-day below the falls intact. Stathakis was dead, his death being due to suffocation.