BASE Jumper Silhouette Free Falling Jump Postcard

A frequent scenario is that the jumper will sit on an elevated highway as police attempt to "talk him down." Potential jumpers are sometimes encouraged to commit suicide by observers, an effect known as "suicide baiting." (see Suicide Baiting correlational study (Mann, 1981) * In August 2004 in Japan, a man jumped from the top of a high rise, crushing a 20-year-old student to death. * Perhaps the most infamous instance of "jumping" involved the September 11, 2001 attacks, when people who leapt from the burning World Trade Centre were captured on film (see The Falling Man). * The Golden Gate Bridge is a popular spot for jumpers due to the length of the fall and temperature of the water below. The 2006 documentary The Bridge captured 19 people ending their lives there. * On August 28, 2001, a woman in Seattle was taunted into jumping from the Ship Canal Bridge by commuters who had been stopped while police tried to talk her down. * In 2001, police were trying to persuade a man not to jump from an overpass into traffic, when someone began transmitting on the police frequency the Van Halen song Jump, whose lyrics repeat "Might as well jump! ... Go ahead, jump!" The man was talked down safely. * Urban legend has it that during the Great Depression, many bankers and people who had lost all their money would often plummet to their doom rather than face the result of the stock market crash. This stereotype might have been popularised by radio personality Will Rogers, who once said, "When Wall Street took that tailspin, you had to stand in line to get a window to jump out of, and speculators were selling space for bodies in the East River. BASE jumping, also sometimes written as base jumping or basejumping, is an activity that employs a parachute or the sequenced use of a wingsuit and parachute to jump from fixed objects, with the parachute unopened at the jump (else see paragliding). "BASE" is an acronym that stands for the four categories of fixed objects from which one can jump: * Building * Antenna * Span * Earth The acronym "BASE" was made up by film-maker Carl Boenish, his wife Jean Boenish, Phil Smith, and Phil Mayfield. Carl was the real catalyst behind modern BASE jumping, and in 1978 filmed the first BASE jumps to be made using ram-air parachutes and the freefall tracking technique (from El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park). While BASE jumps had been made prior to that time, the El Capitan activity was the effective birth of what is now called BASE jumping. BASE jumping is significantly more dangerous than similar sports such as skydiving from aircraft, and is currently regarded by many as a fringe extreme sport or stunt. BASE numbers are awarded to those who have made at least one jump from each of the four categories. When Phil Smith and Phil Mayfield jumped together from a Houston skyscraper on 18 January 1981, they became the first to attain the exclusive BASE numbers (BASE #1 and #2, respectively), having already jumped from antennae, spans, and earthen objects. Jean and Carl Boenish qualified for BASE numbers 3 and 4 soon after. A separate "award" was soon enacted for Night BASE jumping when Mayfield completed each category at night, becoming Night BASE #1, with Smith qualifying a few weeks later. During the early eighties, nearly all BASE jumps were made using standard skydiving equipment, including two parachutes (main and reserve), and deployment components. Later on, specialised equipment and techniques were developed that were designed specifically for the unique needs of BASE jumping. * In 1912, Frederick Law jumped from the Statue of Liberty * In 1912, Franz Reichelt, tailor, jumped from the first deck of the Eiffel Tower testing his invention, the coat parachute. He died. It was his first ever attempt with the parachute and he had told the authorities in advance he would test it first with a dummy. * In 1913, Štefan Banič jumped from a building in order to demonstrate his new parachute to the U. S. Patent Office and military * In 1913, a Russian student Vladimir Ossovski (Владимир Оссовский), from the Saint-Petersburg Conservatory, jumped from the 53-metre high bridge over the river Seine in Rouen (France), using the parachute RK-1, invented a year before that by Gleb Kotelnikov (1872-1944). Ossovski planned jumping from the Eiffel Tower too, but the mayor of Paris didn’t allow that. (Information from the Russian edition of GEO magazine, issue 11, November 2006, GEO). * In 1965, Erich Felbermayer jumped from Cima piccola di Lavaredo, in Italia. * In 1966, Michael Pelkey and Brian Schubert jumped from the cliff "El Capitan" in Yosemite Valley * On 9 November 1975, the first person to parachute off the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, was Bill Eustace, a member of the tower's construction crew. He was fired. * In 1975, Owen J. Quinn, a jobless man, parachuted from the south tower of the World Trade Centre to publicise the plight of the unemployed. * In 1976 Rick Sylvester skied off Canada's Mount Asgard for the opening sequence of the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me, giving the wider world its first look at BASE jumping.* * In 1990 Russell Powell (British) BASE 230 illegally jumped from the Whispering Gallery inside St Pauls Cathedral London. It was the lowest indoor BASE Jump in the world. * In 2008, two men, dressed as engineers, illegally jumped off the Burj Dubai, the tallest man-made structure in the world.Video documentary about the jump from the Burj Dubai tower * In 2009, three women, a Venezuelan Ana Isabel Dao 28 years old, a New Zealander Livia Dickie 29 years old and a Norwegian Anniken Binz 32 years old[1] base jumped from the highest waterfall in the world with a height of 979 metres (3,210 ft) and a clear drop of 807 metres (2,650 ft) Angel Falls located in the Gran Sabana region of Bolivar State in Venezuela. Ana Isabel Dao was the first Venezuelan girl to jump off Angel’s fall.