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Daring man in his flying machine
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What a thrill it would have been to be at Niagara Falls on this day back in 1911. That’s when 150,000 people watched aviation daredevil Lincoln J Beachey fly his Curtiss pusher biplane over Horseshoe Falls, underneath the steel International Bridge, and down the Niagara River gorge.
It was the first time someone had “pierced the mists of the great cataract and flirted with the deadly currents in the Gorge,” The New York Times wrote. “Thrilling,” declared Beachey, the stuntman Orville Wright called “the greatest aviator of them all,” and who was the first to perform the “loop the loop,” the first to fly upside down, and the first to fly inside a building.
All while dressed in a business suit.
Courtesy: U.S. Air Force Museum Archives
