A stroll across Niagara Falls ?
Niagarans may soon see a
Flying Wallenda again cheat death with a daring tightrope walk across mighty Niagara Falls. New York Governor
Andrew M. Cuomo signed legislation which permits
Nik Wallenda to walk 1,800 feet across the Falls on a two-inch-wide steel cable. Wallenda is a member of a seven-generation circus family; earlier, he performed the same high-wire act with his mother in Puerto Rico that killed his great-grandfather
Karl Wallenda in 1978. He hopes to walk across the Falls in June.
The US legislation directs that the State Parks Department allow Wallenda to use
Goat Island as his departure point for the walk in front of Horseshoe Falls to a terrace outside the visitors center on the Canadian side.
The Niagara Parks Commission in Ontario discourages such stunts. If they reject his bid, Wallenda might cross the part of the Falls on the New York side - from Goat Island to
Niagara Falls State Park.
A Wallenda walk over the Falls comes more than 150 years after the "
Great Blondin" first tightrope-walked across the forbidding gorge. Niagara Falls historian, Paul Gromosiak, says the last legal walk was in 1910, when
Oscar Williams stretched a rope across the gorge and hung in the middle for 45 minutes.
Philippe Petit, best known for his 1975 high-wire walk between the World Trade Center towers, performed a 40-foot walk in 1986 near the Horseshoe Falls along the Canadian shore. Tightrope walker,
Jay Cochrane, spent the summers of 2005 and 2007 above Niagara Falls, Ontario; however, his walks were between buildings in the city, and they did not involve land administered by the Parks Commission.
Wallenda lives in Sarasota, Florida. He has walked on wires since he was a mere four years old. His daredevil roots trace back to 1780s Europe when ancestors traveled in a circus while performing aerial and animal acts.
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