On October 24, 1901 - her 63rd birthday - a retired schoolteacher named Annie Edson Taylor climbed into a wooden barrel padded with cushions and a mattress at the top of the mighty Niagara Falls. Friends bolted on the lid and pumped in air through a tube. Then they pushed the barrel into the Niagara River and let the current carry it toward the edge. The drop was 167 feet - taller than a 15-story building. Crowds on both the American and Canadian sides held their breath as the barrel disappeared over the lip.
Annie tumbled through pounding mist and roaring water. The barrel struck rocks, spun, and finally bobbed into the calmer pool below. Rescuers rowed out, hauled the barrel ashore, and pried open the lid. Out climbed Annie, dazed but alive, with only a small cut on her forehead. 'No one ought ever to do that again,' she said to the reporters surrounding her. She was the first person in history to survive a trip over Niagara Falls.
Annie had hoped the stunt would make her rich and famous. Fame came - newspapers printed her picture across the country. Riches did not. Her manager later ran off with the barrel and toured with a younger, prettier woman pretending to be her. Annie ended up earning her living posing for photos with tourists near the falls until she ran out of money in her old age. She is buried in Niagara Falls, New York, in a section of the cemetery called Stunters' Rest - where other daredevils, inspired by her wild birthday, came to lie nearby.
