In this video I mention the Hartford Circus Fire of 1944. Here's the full video I made on that disaster in case you want to learn more: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ho9UR_A0zgw.html
Yet another thing I have to quit. You made me quit cave diving, flying, trains, skydiving, pills, fractal wood burning, hotels, discos, going to work, whiskey, tunnels, racing cars.. Thanks a lot dude
damn it, there goes my vacation plans. here I was gonna race cars in a tunnel while drinking whiskey on my way to work before heading to the disco in my hotel room where I will fractal wood burn while taking pills before skydiving onto a flying train which then dives into a cave. damn.
I was 13 when I saw Karl Wallenda walk the wire across Veterans Stadium in Philly between a Phillies double header on Memorial Day 1976. I was scared of heights as a youngster and I was absolutely petrified. He performed a headstand midway across, then unfurled a US flag from both ends of his balancing rod. He later said that when the flags flapped in the breeze they almost spun him right off the wire, but he wanted to do it for Philly and the Bicentennial. I still have the newspaper about it and my ticket stub.
So we’re the same age. I remember being absolutely fascinated by the feats of the Wallendas. I’d guess that their grandchildren are a bit older than us or around the same age. His great-grandson Nik was born in 1979. I remember seeing a program on TV about them and how they trained.
Karl is my Great-uncle, I’m the of the 8th generation of Wallendas. Gunther is my grandfather. It makes me very proud to see people still awestruck by him. I’m blessed with an incredibly talented and gracious family. If you liked this video, please go see our family perform next time they are near you! (I don’t perform myself, but I do love to slackline and vault on horseback lol)
At what age do family members get exposure to the high wire? I mean how do they even get over the natural fear of heights? I sure hope these children are given a choice and not pressured to do it.
@@nysockexchange2204 no one is pressured into anything, that’s a crazy thing to accuse or assume. Many were born already living with the circus and growing up around it. It’s not scary if you’re trained and know what you’re doing. It’s a source of pride, carrying on the tradition is an honor. Not everyone does though, and that’s ok too. My mom walked the wire regularly through her teens and then went to college and got her masters.
You come from an awesome family! I bet conversations were lively and rich - talking about the acts they did; acts they were going to do; their travel schedule...etc. I would have loved to listen in! Thank you for commenting and sharing your story!
I never actually knew that the wire itself was partially at fault for Karl’s death. I always thought Karl’s advanced age was the primary cause (he was in his 70s) but an improperly assembled and supported wire line on a windy day like that is a whole different story
In the end, it seems complacency got to him anyway. That's part of taking a risk. When it stops feeling like one, it collects its due. Respect for the legacy though
My favourite wallenda memory was Nick crossing Niagara falls. He did it with such ease, I was amazed. One quirk about it was he crossed international border so once he crossed, he had to show his passport. Although it was a tiny detail, it helped me remember his performance.
It's not hard to believe or understand. One of the most common ways to process grief if by throwing yourself into your work and routine. This was his work, and his life.
@@phattjohnson thanks for that correction. Even worse, instead of caring for his son and being on his side his dad just jumped back on the same rope that paralyzed his own child... """Inspirational""", some people have amoebe intelligence.
In 2013, Nick Wallenda became the first person to tightrope the Grand Canyon. 1400 feet long and 1500 feet high. More than 20 minutes on the wire. No harness. Live national TV. He insisted that if he fell, it be shown live.
When Nik returned to finish the walk in Puerto Rico for his grandfather, his grandmother also walked the wire from the other side & they passed each on the wire in the exact spot his grandfather fell as a memorial to him. It was powerful to see & I did cry for them. ❤
I was surprised how many people didn’t realize the Titanic was a real ship until the 100th anniversary in 2012. Time moves on, generations pass, and people and events start to fade into just something you hear tell about.
Thank you for refraining from showing his death. This is one of the only true horror channels that really treats its subjects with the respect and reverence that they deserve - as well as being very well researched and presented ❤ EDIT TO ADD: many of you really, really want to see an old man explode onto concrete. Maybe those people should do some internal questioning instead of accusing this creator of censorship.
I would have preferred to see the entire scope of it, because I can take reality and process it as it exists. It's tremendously important to do this, in reality, for reality. We need to stop avoiding reality.. because it's twisted reality. The lack of respect shows up when its' taken out of our hands, to decide for ourselves, how to process something. So no, it's not respectful, it's controlling behaviorr.. and controlling behavioir always turns into tyrannical behavior.
Fun fact, one of those bold old people is Philippe Petit, famous high wire artist, known for his iconic walk between the Twin Towers in 1974 Dude’s still alive and actively walking at age 75.
As an undergraduate student, I became acquainted with a woman a few decades my senior who had performed with the Wallendas. She was every bit a performer and a fearless woman. Karl's legacy is impressive.
This is a name I have known sort of passively but didn’t really know why other than “they did acrobatics/wire/something circusy.” I’m not surprised how he went out, just sort of statistically speaking it’s probably something he’d considered, but it is always too bad and tragic. Shout out to you for having that footage and being chill enough not to show the actual fall. That’s why I love this channel!
because you cannot handle the reality, you choose to avoid it. I get it. But understand that is what makes you harmless.. a coward. I'm not trying to be mean; I want to be CLEAR. For this human species, as they clutch their pearls at anything hard to do and requires personal investment. definitely not strong enough to take anything on that might be difficult, eh? These are the daily things we do that exposes who we are. Cowards in the collective is normal, don't worry.
@@keetahbroughAn unwillingness to watch a man fall to his death isn’t a moral failing, stranger, but pestering the entire comment section over it might be. Are you this weird all the time?
@@keetahbrough Pretty sure it actually might be a good thing they do not want to see a man's death. In fact, most people do not want to see others die not because they are cowards, but because they care. Even people who deal with death on a daily basis generally dislike seeing people die, it is just not something that people are really made to deal with well.
@@keetahbroughLemme guess, you're a "strong alpha" too? Criiiiinge Being desensitized to death doesn't make you 'not a coward' it makes you desensitized to death
Back in 1977 during a Baseball doubleheader at Cleveland Municipal Stadium I watched Karl Wallenda walk across the top of the Stadium during a light rain. What a great thing to watch👍
The 70s was quite the decade for crazy stunts. You had Evel Knievel trying to jump the Grand Canyon in a rocket in 1974 and in the same year Philip Pettit another high-wire artist walked between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center (which was the subject of the 2015 movie The Walk).
I remember seeing The Flying Wallendas several times on TV as a child. They were truly amazing to watch, as was Carl Wallenda's solo act. I was 13 when he died, & remember being very shocked when hearing about his horrible accident on the news. Very talented man. 😢
I remember him. I was young when he passed, but my parents were very sad. I have been interested in the high wire act my entire life thanks to the Flying Wallendas!
Oh god, I remember this. Thank you for not showing the actual fall, everyone else does and I find it distasteful and disrespectful to Karl and his family.
It's par for the course for this channel. Fascinating Horror tends to stick to the factual parts of the story, not the sensational ones. And showing the fall would have been too sensational for the channel, I think. I keep returning to this channel _because_ it sticks to the facts.
My parents told me this happened on live television back in the 70's when there was no technology to censor a live broadcast. Very sad, but then again, I doubt he would have wanted his end to be any other way.
There was a 2 second delay in a broadcast in the United States mainland. But, this was in San Juan (a property of the US) where they might not have had the same technology, censorship restraint or it just happened so fast that they couldn't catch it.
@@thurayya8905 I am from Puerto Rico and the 2 second delay was a natural transmission delay since the transmission originated from the Island and not mainland. Also, just a pointer, me personally I am not offended, but you might want to watch yourself when calling PR a "property" unless you yourself are Puerto Rican.
His poor wife and family. He loved his life though. Compared to the lives of many, he lived well and had a wonderful life. I hope his family find ways to introduce safety measures that work well.
I was 11 the last time I went to the circus. Several people fell during a trapeze stunt and one of them hit the ground. I don't even know the outcome since we were evacuated while EMS came in. Just thinking about it is making me break out in a bit of a sweat. Hearing that Karl was inadvertently dealing with improperly installed equipment is sadly not a surprise. Hearing that, I thought, but of course. . .
Thank you so much for covering his story. My mother watched it live and it still haunts her to this day. She always told me about his story with such sad eyes. It is still engraved in the memory of many people back home. Truly a sad horror.
I remember his fall. Although you don't show him falling off, my memory finished the video. I remember his fall being attributed to the wind. It was so sad.
I personally don’t need the performers to do their show without a net or similar supplementary safety equipment. Whenever I’ve seen an acrobatics performance at a circus, I still gasp in fear and wonder in amazement as they do their aerial feats. I get wanting to push yourself to greater and greater heights, and no judgment meant to Karl Wallenda, but in my mind the show is no less spectacular with a net. Stepping out on that wire is a far braver thing than I could manage.
Love getting these notifications. Thank you for all you do. This guy has always been really fascinating to me. He didn't have to do any of this but he was compelled, I suppose, by something I couldn't understand.
@@xr6lad why do people always jump to the conclusion that people like this are insane, egotistical, etc. To me it just seems like the things they happen to be interested in, happen to be somewhat dangerous
I remember seeing this live on TV and it really affected me because he looked just like my grandfather and when he fell, it looked really terrifying to him and to us. They had hyped it up for a week on the TV news
I was at my grandma's house in Puerto Rico, watching the live event on TV, when Karl Wallenda fell to his death. I was 7yrs old. I still remember the news reporter narrating the event in disbelief, as Karl struggled to maintain his balance, and shortly after, falling down 10 stories, landing on top of a car.
Interesting fact: one of the audience members at the Connecticut circus fire was a young Charles Nelson Reilly. He never felt relaxed in a theater, and when he was directing operas, would do so from the back of the theater, near the exits.
I talked to my grandma about the Hartford circus fire. Even over seven decades later, I could hear the sadness and horror in her voice as she remembered hearing about it later that day.
Living in Buffalo in the early 90's, the circus was in town. I ran a shoe store. The "younger" Wollendas came in and all purchased shoes. They were so kind and funny. It was a real treat to meet them.
Older recipes for waterproofing canvas used some form of wax, and a distillate of some type. A popular one used paraffin wax, turpentine, and linseed oil. Sometimes kerosene was used. Anyone familiar with old canvas tents or tarps will instantly recognise the distinctive smell of the waterproofing. Nowadays most canvas waterproofing uses silicone, a much safer and less flammable alternative.
It's not the actual height you likely fear, but the perceived likelihood of falling. I'm mildly acrophobic, hate ladders or high balconies...but absolutely love flying in airplanes. In a plane, I don't feel like I'm about to fall...
You're vaguely magnetized to the side of a moldy spinning iron ball that's hurtling in circles around a spherical explosion. Remember this when you lay on the ground outdoors and look up at the sky, it'll make you feel better about "heights". XD
Circus history (and the Wallendas) is something I find endlessly fascinating and have read about for years and years, been to Circus World, Ringling Circus Museum, met a Wallenda, etc. These were athletes who lived and died for their art, who were elite by modern stands, better than many of their contemporary Olympic athletes in the early 20th c. I can’t recommend enough reading every memoir of every old timer circus performer and worker you can find.
A little note for comic-book fans everywhere: the Flying Wallendas are said to have been an inspiration for the Flying Graysons, who were Robin's family.
I remember the Flying Wallendas from the Ringling Bros of the mid 70s, although I assume Karl was not with the troupe when I saw them. I was very young, probably five or six. I remember the bicycle.... bicycles? with the horizontal poles and everyone standing on one another in one of thoss terrifying human pyramids - more of a spiderweb, really. I think the act started with them all dressed in white and moving their arms as if they were flying in slow motion, so they came out onto the wire in formation like geese. but I may be mixing them up with a Russian act, or it may be a child's imagination set off by their name, hazy details that have embroidered the original memory barely recalled almost 50 years later. it's awe-inspiring when one stumbles across a tradition out of the late middle ages or Renaissance (or in this case I suppose early modern, but it was still a long time ago) that's survived into the modern era. Performers like this go back hundreds of years, although the high wire act as it is today depends on modern technology to keep it steady. I can't believe Karl was still going into his 70s, and that it was not an older person's loss of balance but younger people's carelessness (probably) that did him in. still, I'm sure he would not have lived any other life or chosen any other death.
Thank you for this great informative video. The Wallenda family name and act remains an inspiration for me. Whenever I’m confronting a dangerous task, I remember this family could walk that wire without a net. Bless them all!
The thing with something like this is that people are never perfect regardless of their skill. The very best musicians sometimes miss a note. The world's best basketball players have off games. It's really just a matter of time with something like this. You can also never completely remove chaos from the situation no matter how meticulous your preparation is. The incorrectly adjusted support wires in this case are a perfect example. I realize there are high wire performers who make it through their entire careers without an accident but there's some good fortune to that. Given enough time and enough attempts something will eventually go wrong.
Yes. And, there had been incidents for him where things HAD gone wrong. He'd fallen, he'd seen people die. He knew it could happen... and he kept doing it anyway.
Thank you for this, the Wallendas are an amazing family of performers. I've watched a number of Nik's walks, and remember especially the one in NYC with his sister, it was the first time she was back on the wire performing after the fall she had that basically shattered her face.
Since you mentioned the Hartford circus fire,perhaps you can tell the story of " little miss nobody ", the little girl who went unidentified for decades despite numerous inquiries and photos of her sweet little face distributed around the country. Love your channel my friend.
I was working in a bar in Toronto and one of my bosses was calling long distance from Puerto Rico and he saw the fall live and we heard his reaction over the phone. Crazy!
I've been waiting for this one. My youth was full of fascination in circuses, oddities, dynasties of performers. I always found the Wallendas fascinating and unfortunately watched this pretty much in real time. I must have been hooked to this sort of content early from watching "That's Incredible". The footage is bringing back memories.
I saw that footage of his fall on 'faces of death' vhs video in the 80s when i was about 14. At that time, I found it really graphic. And i felt strange for several days afterwards.
That’s how I felt after I watched footage the Pennsylvania state treasurer take his own life live in 1987. I thought “Oh, I can handle it.” Guess what…😖
Deaths like these are sad in the sense that you can't really say or do much about it. He knew what he was getting himself into, he knew the risks, and he did it anyway. While the wire and weather may have played a part in his death, he still did this knowing that falling to his death was a very real possibility. He would have been delusional to think otherwise. He is still at the fault of his own shortcomings. Now what? Experience cannot save you from the lack of safety equipment. End of story... and the end of his story, too.
While working at an archive I saw a recording of the Flying Wallenda's lead by Karl and subsequently learned their history. Neat to see you cover it now
In 1964, I was assistant to Clyde Beatty and his wild animal act, and the Wallendas were on the show. That act consisted of Karl's daughter, Carla, her husband, and a young American, Ray Whitty. I answered a knock on my sleeper door to find Karl Wallenda offering me a spot with his family's wire act. I was working for Beatty, my boyhood hero, and was breaking in on his big cats, so I politely declined Karl's offer. NOTE: "Flying act" describes the flying trapeze act, when flyers drop the bar, turn the trick in mid-air, and are caught by the hands of the catcher swinging up to them. That is the flying act. The High-Wire Wallendas use the common misnomer of "The Flying..." as it is familiar to the public ear. PS: A neighbor here describes seeing the Wallendas fall in Detroit, in '62.
6:02 Karl not only caught the wire as he fell, he also managed to grab hold of his niece Jana as she fell from her place at the top of the pyramid. He and his brother Herman held onto her until a net was improvised. One of the men killed was her brother (the other man killed was Karl's son-in-law.)
On a related note, the documentary film Man on Wire about Philippe Petit is well worth watching. Petit, of course, is the French wire walker who walked between the two towers of World Trade Center in 1974. The Walk, also about Petit and directed by Robert Zemeckis, is pretty good as well.
I remember watching your video on that circus fire. I still can't believe they used gasoline to waterproof canvas. It was like the wreak of the Karang. I watched on ABC's Wide World of Sports when Karl had the accident.
Once again, a fascinating presentation from the one and only Fascinating Horror. Maybe Karl knew. Maybe he realised, with his lifelong experience with the high-wire, that it would only be a matter of time before he had leave up there for the last time. Maybe he saw elder wire-walkers forced to get down, condemned to the earth and filled with loss and sorrow. Maybe he wanted to make sure that being up there would be his final act.
