Some people never stop chasing the adrenaline rush that only comes from performing the wildest and most dangerous stunts, and unfortunately, the risk is sometimes far greater than the reward. Here's a look at daredevils who tragically lost their lives doing insane stunts.
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00:00Some people never stop chasing the adrenaline rush that only comes from performing the wildest
00:05and most dangerous stunts, and unfortunately, the risk is sometimes far greater than the reward.
00:11Here's a look at daredevils who tragically lost their lives doing insane stunts.
00:16Most of us don't need to build a rocket in order to know that the Earth isn't flat.
00:20Still, there are some people who are convinced that it's all a big conspiracy
00:24that literally every scientist in the world is in on.
00:27It seemed Mike Hughes was one of that handful of people who was convinced that the Earth is flat,
00:32but he wanted the rest of the world to be convinced, too.
00:35So he built a rocket, which he launched from the California desert.
00:39That's one way to find out whether or not the Earth is flat.
00:42Those remote cameras should tell you everything you need to know.
00:45Except, he didn't just send up cameras. He wanted to see the flat Earth with his own eyes.
00:50Unfortunately, his rocket crashed shortly after launch,
00:53and he was killed before he could reach the hoped-for altitude of 5,000 feet.
00:58Hughes' publicist Darren Shuster told the New York Times after Hughes' death
01:02that Hughes didn't actually believe the Earth was flat. He said,
01:06He was eccentric and believed in some government conspiracies, for sure,
01:10but it was a PR stunt. Either way, it's not quite clear.
01:13I believe it is flat.
01:15I believe you don't believe that, and you just want a free trip to space.
01:21A lot of people think that.
01:22Regardless, Hughes wasn't an amateur daredevil. According to the BBC,
01:26he'd successfully completed a lower altitude launch the year before his fatal attempt,
01:30and he set a Guinness World Record in 2002 for the longest limousine jump.
01:35So his fatal accident wasn't necessarily because he was an inexperienced daredevil,
01:40and there was definitely an element of very, very bad luck.
01:44Jesse Combs originally set the land speed record for a four-wheeled vehicle in October 2013.
01:50Her jet-powered vehicle hit 398 miles per hour, but Combs wasn't satisfied. She made a few
01:56attempts to bust her own speed record and clocked more than 483 miles per hour in those attempts,
02:02but the runs couldn't be recorded as records because of mechanical issues.
02:06Undaunted, Combs decided she was going to aim for 619 miles per hour.
02:11Ultimately, she wanted to beat Kitty O'Neill's land speed record of 512 miles per hour,
02:16which had been set in a three-wheeled vehicle in 1976.
02:20Combs was in her jet-powered car on a dry leg bed in Oregon's Alvord Desert when USA Today
02:26says the front wheels suffered a mechanical failure, causing the entire wheel assembly to
02:31collapse. Combs had accelerated to nearly 550 miles per hour at the time of the failure,
02:37and was posthumously awarded the world record.
02:40Human beings love competitive sports. Human beings also love to watch other human beings
02:45do ridiculously dangerous stuff. The X Games, which have been held every year since 1995,
02:51are a happy union of the two, ridiculously dangerous competitive sporting events
02:56complete with gold medals, prize money, and mortal peril. Still, despite a large number
03:01of serious injuries, the X Games managed to get through quite a lot of years without any fatalities,
03:06until Caleb Moore's freestyle snowmobile jump at the Winter X Games in 2013.
03:12Moore was performing in the freestyle snowmobile competition when he attempted
03:15a backflip at a speed that was a little too slow for the maneuver. According to Deadspin,
03:20he under-rotated, and the snowmobile's skis dug into the snow, flinging him from the seat.
03:26That might have been survivable on its own, but unfortunately,
03:29Moore's 450-pound snowmobile landed on his chest.
03:33Still, it looked like Moore would be okay. He actually walked away from the scene.
03:38A few hours later, though, it became clear that the accident had damaged his heart.
03:42He went into cardiopulmonary arrest and died a few days later, becoming the first X Games fatality.
03:49Base jumping carries a 1 in 2,317 risk of death. Sounds pretty safe, right? That's per jump,
03:56though. So if you jump 25 times a year for 10 years, well, you'll probably like those odds a
04:02lot less. Base jumping websites even admit it's dangerous. Heck, danger is part of the appeal.
04:08But unfortunately, it's also why we really shouldn't be surprised that there were so
04:12many deceased base jumpers. Uli Emanuel was famous for a wingsuit jump through a 6.5-foot-wide crevice
04:19in a Swiss mountain, which is widely thought to be the most difficult wingsuit maneuver
04:24ever accomplished. But even the best base jumpers are vulnerable when they're flying
04:28around the mountaintops at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour, and Emanuel's luck ran out while
04:34he was shooting video for GoPro in the Dolomites. According to The Inertia, Emanuel lost control
04:39during a jump and crashed into the rocks before he could deploy his parachute. He was 29 years old.
04:47Sixty-year-old Angela Madsen was a Paralympic rower and an inspiration for anyone trying to
04:52come back from a serious injury. Madsen was injured while playing basketball in 1981,
04:57and a botched surgery cost her the use of her legs. In 1997, she became a competitive rower,
05:03and in 2012, she won a bronze medal at the Paralympic Games.
05:08Madsen's ambitions went a long way past rowing in competitions, though, and in 2007,
05:13she became the first woman with a disability to row across the Atlantic Ocean. Then in 2009,
05:19she became one of the first two women to row across the Indian Ocean. She then set her sights
05:23on the Pacific. This time, she planned to go solo. Tragically, Madsen died 60 days into her
05:30attempt to row across the Pacific Ocean alone. In her last communication, she'd mentioned that
05:36her boat needed repairs, but by the next day, she'd fallen silent, and tracking data indicated
05:41that the boat was not being rowed. The Coast Guard found her floating in the ocean on June 22,
05:462020, still tethered to her boat. So far, no one knows the circumstances that led to her death.