No doubt he'd already done all the other things:
A man underwent an intensive parachute course so that he could throw himself out of a plane in the UK and commit suicide.
The 27-year-old, who has not been named, died on Saturday afternoon after cutting through the lines of his parachute on his first jump and plunging to the ground.
CHE............................................CK!
UPDATE:
Our minds may have been running on the same track, but Bill's took the spur to a far sunnier clime than my own.
Regarding other falls from a great height (non-airplane category), here's an excellent article on people who've survived jumping off the Golden Gate, and San Franciscan resistance to putting suicide barriers on the bridge.
Posted by floridacracker at May 1, 2006 03:53 AMThere were some mighty interesting links on Bill's page that I followed.
I'm thinking that 'involuntary' is a word that best describes what happened to most of the people that took those falls.
Here's a link to a pic that *may* be one of him:
http://www.303rdbg.com/c-360-adams.html
I remembered the one about the Czech stewardess:
From Guinness:
Highest fall survived without parachute
Who: Vesna Vulovic
When: January 26th, 1972
Where: Somewhere over the Czech Republic
What: 33,330 ft.
Vesna Vulovic, a flight attendant from Yugoslavia, survived a fall from 10,160 m. (33,330 ft.) when the DC-9 in which she was traveling blew up over Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), on January 26, 1972. No other passengers survived. It is believed the plane crashed after the detonation of a bomb planted by Croatian terrorists in the forward cargo hold. Vesna Vulovic fell 10,160 m. (33,330 ft.) - breaking both legs and becoming paralyzed from the waist down.
My uncle was president of the National Parachute Assn. around that time and it was a hot topic around the airfield where they made their jumps at.
Still, it's worth repeating: "Kids, don't try this at home."
Posted by: Gmac at May 1, 2006 10:27 AMScrew Bill and whatever mode of transportation he rode in on. Wasn't my post delightful? See, the premise is the guy's done all the other '50 Things To Do Before You Die' and this was the last thing on his list. So he did it and died.
And I made the font get smaller and smaller as he fell, and he was yelling "Check!" like he was checking it off that list.
Get it? Isn't that cute and funny? :)
Much better than Bill's post, I think. But if you want to think that all that creativity of mine and then the pure hard work with the font size was all a set-up for a trip to Bill's, go ahead. :0
Yeah, he did have some really interesting links.
Posted by: Donnah at May 1, 2006 10:38 AMSucks that the guy had to use a static line, and hence shears to laboriously cut himself free. Probably took a lil away from the whole, "leaping out of a plane to my death" ambience.
re: Gmac's preferences: People gravitate towards quality.
It said in the article that another guy a few years earlier had simply released his harness. What it a different kind of line that allowed him to do this, or was this recent chap just dim?
re:Gmac's preferences: It's always in a gentleman's best interests to compliment the lady.
Posted by: Donnah at May 1, 2006 11:26 AMYes, I did like the formatting and it wasn't lost on me :)
Posted by: Gmac at May 1, 2006 12:39 PMI know it. I was just being fresh.
Posted by: Donnah at May 1, 2006 12:44 PMYour smaller font trick sucks, by the way.
I did the same effect in a post last year, except my last letters and exclamation point actually got SMALLER.
Hack.
Posted by: Bill from INDC at May 1, 2006 04:06 PMIt's a one-syllable word. It's the vowel that has to carry things. What comes after the vowel is the impact of him hitting the ground.
Posted by: Donnah at May 1, 2006 06:25 PMWh nds vwls?
Posted by: tfhr at May 1, 2006 10:46 PM