Daredevils Who Lost Their Lives During Insane Stunts

Compared to getting into a barrel and having yourself rolled over the edge of Niagara Falls, high diving seems sort of tame by comparison. But remember that diving is a pretty precision activity — if you don't do it right, you could break some bones because when you're jumping from way up high, water isn't really that much different from concrete.
Samuel Gilbert Scott made his living as a high-diver. According to History House, Scott was a former sailor who probably unlearned any fear of heights he might once have had while working at the tops of ships' masts. After leaving the U.S. Navy, he transitioned those skills into daredevil performances where he would climb to the top of a ship's mast, do some acrobatics, and then dive into the water. Since daredevils need to do increasingly daring things lest their audiences get bored, he soon expanded his repertoire to include jumps from bridges, piers, and chimneys.
Once diving started to become old hat, he decided it would be fun to wow the crowd by pretending to hang himself. Only on January 11, 1841, he wasn't just pretending — in front of a crowd, he hanged himself from Waterloo Bridge and was dead before the crowd realized it wasn't a part of the act. Though it seems like it could have been deliberate, most sources agree that Scott's death was a tragic accident.
[Featured image by Wellcome Images via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped, scaled, and mirrored | CC BY 2.0]
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