Felix Baumgartner, daredevil who jumped from the stratosphere, dies in paragliding accident at age 56

Felix Baumgartner, the daredevil who made a record-breaking parachute soar from the stratosphere in 2012, died Thursday in a paragliding accident in Italy, an area mayor confirmed. Firefighters who responded to the scene stated they discovered a paraglider that had crashed into the aspect of a swimming pool within the metropolis of Porto Sant Elpidio, on central Italy’s jap coast.

“Our neighborhood is deeply affected by the tragic disappearance of Felix Baumgartner, a determine of worldwide prominence, a logo of braveness and keenness for excessive flight,” the city’s mayor, Massimiliano Ciarpella, stated on Fb. Ciarpella informed The Related Press that the acute athlete had been within the space on trip. 

Witnesses informed The Related Press they heard a loud increase because the paraglider spun uncontrolled. Mirella Ivanov, 30, informed AP she was within the space along with her two younger kids once they noticed the paraglider lose management. 

“The whole lot was regular, then it began to spin like a prime,” Ivanov stated Friday. “It went down and we heard a roar. The truth is, I circled as a result of I assumed it crashed on the rocks.” 

Baumgartner, 56, made world headlines in 2012 when he was lifted into the stratosphere, about 24 miles up, in a capsule carried by a helium balloon, after which parachuted right down to a touchdown in New Mexico. Through the soar, he broke the document for quickest free fall, descending at about 843.6 mph and changing into the primary human to interrupt the sound barrier with out the help of a car.

Initially from Austria, Baumgartner started skydiving at age 16 and additional honed his abilities within the Austrian army, in line with his private web site. In 1988, he teamed up with Purple Bull, which sponsored the stratosphere soar underneath the Stratos mission and lots of different daring feats.  

The coaching and planning for the 2012 Stratos soar took 5 years. Among the many information Baumgartner would break that day was highest soar, which had been held by Air Pressure Capt. Joe Kittinger since 1960, when he leapt from an open-air gondola basket that rose to 102,000 ft. Kittinger would go on to coach Baumgartner for the record-breaking Stratos soar. (Baumgartner’s peak document was damaged two years later.)

Along with skydiving, Baumgartner was an achieved BASE jumper, breaking two information in 1999: highest BASE soar and lowest BASE soar. The low soar, which he took from one of many fingers of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, was solely 95 ft. The excessive soar was taken from the 88th flooring of the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, though that document has since been damaged and is at the moment held by the late Valery Rozov, who jumped from Cho Oyu in 2016.

Baumgartner was additionally a helicopter pilot and was a part of Purple Bull’s aerial acrobatics staff. 

“Ever since I used to be a baby, I’ve all the time wished to leap out of a airplane,” Baumgartner informed Purple Bull in an interview after changing into a licensed helicopter pilot.

“For Purple Bull Stratos, we had a really lengthy listing of ‘what ifs,’ in different phrases eventualities that might occur and the way we might take care of them in an emergency. The listing saved getting longer and longer. I used to be solely afraid of the issues that weren’t on the listing. The issues we had not considered,” he informed Purple Bull, including: “To today, I abort missions if the situations are usually not proper.”

Whereas Baumgartner’s stunts impressed thousands and thousands, his political beliefs had been recognized to trigger controversy. On social media, he mocked local weather activists and others who sought to restrict the results of local weather change, and voiced opposition to LGBTQ rights, in line with the AFP information company. He additionally as soon as recommended Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán ought to obtain the Nobel Peace Prize for his anti-immigration insurance policies.