The Five Biggest Idiots Ever To Go Over Niagara Falls In A Barrel.
In a tragic accident last week, a Japanese student was killed at Niagara falls after her optimistic safety plan of “balancing on a railing” failed to pan out.
Although accidents are rare at the falls, deliberate attempts to travel over the edge of the 165 foot waterslide of death in homemade contraptions are far more common than you’d hope, by which I mean “they’ve happened at all, even once.”
Of those who have made documented trips over Niagara, many people miraculously survived, be it through solid planning, clever engineering, or astonishing luck.
These five people all went over the edge deliberately and died, and all of them did so spectacularly.
Whilst it’s not the standing policy of this website to mock the dead (at least not any more than the living) it’s worth saluting the Wile E. Coyote manner in which these people joined the choir invisible at Canada’s favourite landmark.
(Canada’s second favourite landmark, by the way, is that taco stand in Vancouver.)
5. “Red” Hill Jr.
The Man:
There are only three ways to earn the nickname Red; being ginger, being a communist, or being a stone-cold bad-ass. William “Red” Hill Jr. was at least two of those things.
The Plan:
Whilst it’s irresponsible to speculate about a person’s psychology without knowing them intimately, it’s fair to say ol’ Red had some daddy issues. Hill Sr. had been famous for making multiple trips over the falls himself, and Junior was determined to prove that he could do it, too.
The Attempt:
If there’s one thing that crops up time and again in stories of people who successfully made it through the liquid hell of Niagara, it’s phrases like “huge, steel barrel” and “solid oak construction.”
“Fuck all that,” Hill presumably said, and attempted to make the trip in a rig he’d built himself, reportedly out of “industrial inner tubes and fishing nets.”
Having already used a lucky thirteen tubes to build his craft, he nicknamed it “The Thing”, because if there were two things Red Hill Jr. was bad at, it was “sound decisions” and “naming shit.”
Turns out, the reason nobody is catching fish with nets at Niagara falls is that fish nets of the kind Hill used tend to get shredded under the ludicrous, hammer-of-god pressures. And the reason nobody tries to float around the falls in an inner tube is that we all like being alive.
Hill’s craft, unsurprisingly, did not survive the trip over the edge of the falls and neither did he. His body finally washed up the following morning, and was directly responsible for any future daredevil attempts being made illegal.
4. George Stathakis.
The Man:
George Stathakis was a chef who wanted to use the fame his stunt would generate to launch his career as a psychic. You might think this makes him sound like some sort of crazy person, but would a crazy person carry his pet turtle over the falls for luck?!
Yes. And Stathakis did.
The Plan:
In fairness, for a man who was so bad a psychic he couldn’t forsee his own death, and so bad a critical thinker that he thought he was psychic, George Stathakis actually had the foresight and scientific acument to construct an extremely strong, 2,000lb barrel for himself and his turtle to ride in. On paper at least, this was a fairly solid plan.
The Attempt:
What George didn’t bank on was that the force of the falls can pin things like a big heavy barrel down pretty effectively. Stathakis’ huge receptacle became trapped behind the wall of water for 18 hours, like a cork turning over and over in a stream.
Eighteen hours was also about 12 hours more than the oxygen in the barrel could sustain a person for. If you can think of a worse way to punch out than slowly suffocating inside a giant washing machine, it probably involves words like “burrowing testicle scorpions.”
The pet turtle, “Sonny Boy”, survived the ordeal. History does not record if Sonny Boy went on to further daredevil stunts, so we’re forced to assume that he later jumped the Grand Canyon on a rocket bike.
3. Jesse Sharp
The Man:
Jesse Sharp was a 28 year old unemployed daredevil who wanted to break into the stunt business, and decided the best way to do this was to bring a little old fashioned showmanship to his burgeoning career. He attempted the falls in 1990, having failed ten years before. The reason he failed that attempt? His parents called the cops on him.
The Plan:
Jesse refused to wear a helmet for his stunt, because he wanted his face to be clearly visible on camera at all times.
Judging by this and other facets of his scheme, Jesse should probably have been wearing a helmet for pretty much everything. His entire plan seemed to consist of 1) Paddle a ten foot plastic kayak into the world’s most powerful waterfall, and 3) Stunt career!
The Attempt:
Somewhere around Step 2, things went bad. Although he’d thought to avoid becoming trapped under the falls by his own buoyancy like George Stathakis, his method for avoiding this outcome was to also avoid wearing a life vest. His canoe made the trip with nothing worse than a minor dent, but Sharp’s body was never found.
2. George Stephens
The Man:
Hailing from Bristol, England, George Stephens was known as “The Demon Barber of Bedminster” because of his roles in Tim Burton musicals.
Nah, Stephens was a daredevil of local fame who had already completed numerous dives and parachute jumps from balloons. He was a man unafraid of falling, water, or mortal danger, so he seemed as well qualified as anyone for a shot at Niagara.
The Plan:
George constructed a large barrel out of heavy Russian oak, which was smart. It was paid for by contributions from the regulars at his local pub, which is either strangely heartwarming or a sign that nobody in that pub liked him very much. Either way, heavy oak seemed like a good use of the money. He then unfortunately decided that practice runs and testing were for men with lesser moustaches than his.
Ignoring the advice of several people who had actually successfully navigated the falls before him, including Red Hill Sr., George strapped himself securely to the inside of the barrel and, for ballast, tied an anvil to his own feet.
The Attempt:
Although nobody outside of the ACME Corporation has ever done extensive research in the anvil/barrel/waterfall department, anybody who wants to start should study George Stephens. His attempt seemed to go okay for at least 95% of its duration, right up until the barrel hit the water at the bottom of the falls. At this point, the barrel, being buoyant, came to a halt, whereas the anvil, being heavy, continued on its suicidal plummet into the depths, with George still tied to it.
Eventually, the barrel broke apart and drifted ashore. One of Stephens’ arms was still securely strapped inside.
1. Robert Overacker.
The Man:
Robert Overacker was a 39-year-old Californian who crossed the country in 1995 in order to act out the sort of plan most of us would think was awesome if we were stoned, drunk, crazy, or Robert Overacker. If you are Robert Overacker’s kind of crazy, it should come as no surprise to learn that his main motivation for the stunt was to highlight the plight of the nation’s homeless.
The Plan:
Overacker’s plan was nothing if not ambitious, combining as it did a jet ski, a death-plunge and a rocket-propelled backpack. He basically invented a real life version of the Just Cause video game franchise fifteen years ahead of time.
Overacker’s idea was to ride full-tilt towards the edge of the falls on his jet ski, and have his rocket ‘chute deploy as he hit the rim, allowing him to let go of the jet ski and drift to safety below, cementing his status as World’s Awesomest Man.
The Attempt:
The trouble with big stunts is that they’re a collaborative effort. The sort of person who has the required amount of crazy to dream them up doesn’t necessarily have the sort of detail-oriented, technical mind that will make them work.
Robert Overacker was the sort of man who thought in terms of jet-skis and rocket-packs, but he also appeared to be the sort of man who, when asked if he'd done his final checks, assumed "final check" was a synonym for "tequila slammer."
It’s worth noting for posterity that Overacker’s plan worked in a lot of ways. He successfully rode his jet-ski to the edge of the falls like a bat out of hell, and the rocket-chute successfully deployed.
What Overacker had forgotten to do was attach the parachute to any part of himself.
Although his fate was as sad as it was predictable from that point onwards, it’s worth noting that Robert Overacker did something nobody else on the list managed: He left the world the most badass “final photo” in human history.
Written June 17th, 2012.
I’d always thought of this as one of my better, unsung masterpieces. Coming back to it, I was amazed at how much I had to edit and fix. There’s a lesson in there, somewhere. It’s often the case that the stuff you think is brilliant is hacky and rushed, and the stuff you forget you did at all is sometimes your best work.