Felix Baumgartner, daredevil who jumped from the stratosphere, dies in paragliding coincidence at age 56 by means of NewsFlicks

Felix Baumgartner, the daredevil who made a record-breaking parachute soar from the stratosphere in 2012, died Thursday in a paragliding coincidence in Italy, a neighborhood mayor showed. Firefighters who spoke back to the scene mentioned they discovered a paraglider that had crashed into the aspect of a swimming pool within the town of Porto Sant Elpidio, on central Italy’s jap coast.

“Our neighborhood is deeply suffering from the tragic disappearance of Felix Baumgartner, a determine of world prominence, a logo of braveness and keenness for excessive flight,” the city’s mayor, Massimiliano Ciarpella, mentioned on Fb. Ciarpella informed The Related Press that the extraordinary athlete have been within the house on holiday. 

Witnesses informed The Related Press they heard a noisy growth because the paraglider spun out of regulate. Mirella Ivanov, 30, informed AP she was once within the house together with her two small children after they noticed the paraglider lose regulate. 

“The whole lot was once commonplace, then it began to spin like a best,” Ivanov mentioned Friday. “It went down and we heard a roar. In reality, I grew to become round as a result of I assumed it crashed at the rocks.” 

Baumgartner, 56, made international headlines in 2012 when he was once lifted into the stratosphere, about 24 miles up, in a tablet carried by means of a helium balloon, after which parachuted right down to a touchdown in New Mexico. Right through the soar, he broke the checklist for quickest unfastened fall, descending at about 843.6 mph and turning into the primary human to damage the sound barrier with out the help of a automobile.

At the beginning from Austria, Baumgartner started skydiving at age 16 and extra honed his abilities within the Austrian army, in line with his non-public website online. In 1988, he teamed up with Purple Bull, which subsidized the stratosphere soar beneath the Stratos challenge and plenty of different bold feats.  

The learning and making plans for the 2012 Stratos soar took 5 years. Some of the data Baumgartner would wreck that day was once very best soar, which have been held by means of Air Drive Capt. Joe Kittinger since 1960, when he leapt from an open-air gondola basket that rose to 102,000 ft. Kittinger would cross on to coach Baumgartner for the record-breaking Stratos soar. (Baumgartner’s top checklist was once damaged two years later.)

Along with skydiving, Baumgartner was once an achieved BASE jumper, breaking two data in 1999: very best BASE soar and lowest BASE soar. The low soar, which he took from one of the vital fingers of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, was once simplest 95 ft. The prime soar was once taken from the 88th ground of the Petronas Dual Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, even if that checklist has since been damaged and is these days held by means of the overdue Valery Rozov, who jumped from Cho Oyu in 2016.

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

“Ever since I used to be a kid, I’ve at all times sought after to leap out of a aircraft,” Baumgartner informed Purple Bull in an interview after turning into a certified helicopter pilot.

“For Purple Bull Stratos, we had an excessively lengthy checklist of ‘what ifs,’ in different phrases scenarios that would occur and the way we’d maintain them in an emergency. The checklist saved getting longer and longer. I used to be simplest terrified of the issues that weren’t at the checklist. The issues we had now not considered,” he informed Purple Bull, including: “To these days, I abort missions if the stipulations aren’t proper.”

Whilst Baumgartner’s stunts impressed thousands and thousands, his political opinions have been recognized to reason controversy. On social media, he mocked local weather activists and others who sought to restrict the consequences of local weather exchange, and voiced opposition to LGBTQ rights, in line with the AFP information company. He additionally as soon as instructed Hungarian High Minister Viktor Orbán will have to obtain the Nobel Peace Prize for his anti-immigration insurance policies.