02x06 - Thrills & Spills

[bunniefuu]

[mellow pulsating music]

- Did you know there was a time
when polo needed an airbag?

[dramatic music]

- [Rutledge] They started
drawing crowds of 5,000 people

because they would show
up for the competition,

but they would stay
for the carnage.

[crowd cheering]

- Do you remember when
your high dive partner

could be a horse?

- [Adam] A 1,000 pound
horse will make contact

at roughly 30,000
pounds of force.

[water splashing]

- Or when connecting flights
meant changing planes mid air?

[propellers buzzing]

- [Romi] You want
to play a tennis match

a mile up in the air?

They actually set one up.

- But what an idea,

what an idea.

[dramatic music]

- These are the things we
used to do for fun, for money,

or maybe out of boredom
that we'll never see again.

Were they dangerous?

Certainly.

Deadly?

Occasionally.

But boy, wasn't it exciting?

[mellow pulsating music]

Americans have always
been thrill seekers

and we start young
at the playground,

especially when the
equipment seemed designed

for one purpose only,
to try and break us.

[dramatic music]

- [Don] The late


millions of people arrived
from Europe primarily

and they are crowding
into these neighborhoods

of New York City and
Boston and Philadelphia,

piled on top of each other.

Absolutely nowhere
for kids to play.

So where do they go?

Out into the streets.

[dramatic music]

- [Steve] They'd be
getting into trouble,

getting into fights.

We're talking thousands of kids.

- [Don] They are involved in
gambling, drinking, smoking.

What kids do when they
hang out on the streets.

They're also getting
run over by trolleys.

Mothers, community
leaders, politicians,

everyone starts to
look for healthy

alternatives for these kids,

and what they come up
with are playgrounds.

[mellow music]

- [Henry] The idea
behind playgrounds

is to create a local spot

where kids can get all
their bottled up energy out.

- They've got
everything we think of

that a modern
playground would have,

swings and monkey
bars and slides.

- Any kid who's gone
down any metal slide

knows that steel gets
really, really hot,

like 150-degrees hot.

Your skin makes this
screeching sound

as you get stuck going down.
[screeching]

- [Henry] But there was one
legendary piece of equipment

that was on nearly
every playground

until it went extinct.

- One of the most popular pieces

of playground equipment
is the miracle whirl.

It's a metal disc on an axis.

You run top speed,
grab a handle,

and when you feel it's
going fast enough,

you sort of throw caution
and your life to the wind

and just jump on.

- [Brian] The park where I
grew up had two miracle whirls.

It served one purpose,

and that was to see who

could throw up the fastest.

- It's a vomit machine.

There is always some
kid spinning so fast

that other kids are puking

and if they're not puking,

they're falling off.

- [Henry] The miracle
whirl's design

has numerous potential pitfalls.

- [Adam] The only thing
holding you on this ride

is the strength of your grip.

A child's grip.

- [Austin] If for some reason

you are spun from the
high end to the low end,

you can have your legs

trapped under the low end.

And should you be catapulted
from the high side,

you're not landing on today's
recycled rubber modular mats.

- Growing up in the 1970s,

there was no padding
on the ground.

You took chances.

- [Austin] You're
landing on whatever

was around that the town had.

Could be wood chips, could be
asphalt, could be bare earth,

could be bricks.

[mellow music]

- [Henry] The miracle
whirl goes through

several safety redesigns
through the decades,

but eventually
falls out of favor

in the 90s and early 2000s.

- When you're being
raised in a world

where your parents are happy

to put you on the miracle
whirl, you know you survived it.

But I just think that
like if your childhood

starts from a place of
t*rture devices for fun,

that you can handle almost
anything life throws you.

I think.

But I don't have kids.

[laughing]

[mellow music]

- Once you survive
the playground,

you are ready for
the amusement park.

But back in the 80s, there
was one notorious destination

that nobody was ready for.

[dramatic music]

- [Hakeem] In the 70s and 80s,
water parks are a new concept

and Gene Mulvihill comes up

with an idea for Action Park.

He's gonna be in
the center of it all

and he markets it as the park

for the ultimate thrill seeker.

- [Announcer] It's got
cliff diving,

air slides, rapids, waterfalls.

- Gene Mulvihill kind of
had this grandiose vision

of he was going to be
the next Walt Disney,

but Action Park was probably one

of the most ill-advised

parks in the history

of amusement parks on earth.

[screaming]

- [Steve] Every one of
my friends that went

came back with a
cast and stitches.

- We would pull up to it talking

about which dangerous ride

that we were gonna go on
to prove how tough we were

and our parents were like,
here's money, get in there.

We'll be at the bar.

[dramatic music]

- [Edward] At the
time in New Jersey,

there's an advisory board
for amusement park rides,

but not a regulatory agency.

So Mulvihill doesn't
need any permit

when he goes about
building this thing.

- [Henry] With nothing
holding him back,

Mulvihill dreams up
one of the park's

most unforgettable rides.

It's the nation's first
looping water slide,

the Cannon Ball Loop.

[mellow music]

- So the Cannon Ball is a



that has a 360-degree loop that
spits you out at the bottom.

- It defied every
engineering principle,

every mechanism
for safety or risk.

- When I look at this, I'm
like, this clearly was designed

by someone who has no
engineering experience

and guess what?

It was.

- [Edward] Gene
Mulvihill designed

the Cannonball Loop on
the back of a napkin.

He's not an architect,

he's not a designer,
he's not an engineer.

He has no business
building this thing.

- [Brian] The Cannonball
Loop was so dangerous looking

and so ill-conceived

that him and his
workers didn't want to

try it out and test it.

- [Nicole] So Gene gets his
son to test this water slide.

His son doesn't even have
enough faith in Gene.

He decides, hey, I'm
gonna go down it, dad,

but I'm gonna go down it
in full-blown hockey gear.

And this is a slide designed

for people in bathing suits,

okay, not hockey gear.

- Gene Mulvihill using his
son to test out this ride

just says so much
about attitudes

around parenting from that era.

- [Henry] Then Mulvihill
starts paying park employees,

mostly high school
students, to go down.

- Mulvihill offers them $100

to be the guinea
pigs, essentially.

So one by one they go
down the water slide

and there's a problem.

[dramatic music]

- [Hakeem] When
they enter the loop,

the riders have to
have enough speed

to make it all the
way around the loop.

If you didn't make it, you
fall back down the tube

and now you're really stuck.

You can't go back up
the 60-foot incline

and you can't go up the loop.

What do you do?

- The only way to get out
eventually is they lower ropes

down the tube where the
kids can latch onto it

and then they pull them

all the way back out.

- They finally decide that

there's enough
people getting stuck

that they have to create
this hatch to get people out.

- This was a ride that

had its own escape hatch.

That's how bad it was.

- [Henry] But
amazingly, getting stuck

is not the worst
possible outcome.

- [Brian] People would
come out and be like,

why am I bleeding from here,

why am I bleeding from here?

It's a water ride.

How are people getting cut?

They open a hatch
and they see that

people were losing

their teeth on the ride.

The teeth would get
embedded into the ride

like shards of glass
and then we would

just go on it and sh**t around

and get cut up by
people's teeth.

People's teeth!

- [Henry] The Cannonball
Loop causes so much carnage

that responsible adults
are forced to intervene.

- So many people
had been injured

that the advisory board said,

hey, we got to put
the brakes on this.

- [Henry] The ride is
only open for a month,

but the park itself hangs
on for another 11 years.

- A lot of these things

that we talk about

sound kind of dangerous and
perhaps too risky for children

to be engaging with.

But as someone that like
lived through that era,

there was a sense of
pride in acknowledging

and surviving the danger.

That was Action Park

and I couldn't wait
to go back next year.

- So many people got
hurt at Action Park

that healthcare workers
nicknamed the place

Traction Park.

- Americans have loved
the thrill of auto races

since cars first hit the
streets in the 1880s.

People wanted to see
drivers push themselves

to breakneck speeds,

a term that for some early
racers was quite literal.

[mellow music]

- It's hard to imagine

the newness of a car.

[engine clattering]

They come out of nowhere

and people want to see them.

Almost as soon as we have
cars, we have car races.

[engines revving]

- [Nicole] Back in the
day it was very lawless.

You did not have sanctioning
bodies, you did not have rules.

[dramatic music]

- [Henry] By 1900 cars
were able to reach

a speed up to 70 miles an hour

and that's when the craziness

of auto racing really takes off.

- This is still new technology

that now people are

pushing to the limits.

[brakes screeching]

- Keep in mind, there's
no safety regulations.

[gears winding]
[car crashing]

There's no seat belts.

[metal crunching]

There's definitely no helmets,

so a lot of times
during the races,

these drivers were
just getting thrown out

if they didn't catch
on fire beforehand.

[mellow music]

- [Henry] By the 1920s the
sport becomes so popular,

promoters roll out
a new invention,

a type of racetrack
called the motordrome.

- [Announcer] At
Altoona, Pennsylvania,

they got rid of the dust

by building a wondrous
wooden saucer,

which became more oil
soaked and slippery.

[dramatic music]

- [Adam] Essentially,
these were hastily

constructed cheap tracks
that were made of planking,

but to make it the
spectacle more exciting,

they began making banked tracks.

- [Rutledge] It was pretty cool

because you could
see all the action,

they would be sort of contained
and the track could travel,

but it was still
just as dangerous

as any racing was before it.

[dramatic music]

- [Henry] Because
the wooden planks

of a board track can be
disassembled and reassembled,

it moves around frequently
to different venues,

which also makes
it very unstable.

- You have relatively
inexperienced drivers

on relatively unproven
pieces of machinery,

hurtling around a
hastily made track

that would sometimes
disintegrate

while driving on it.

And if it sounds scary,

it's because it was

freaking terrifying.

[engines revving]

- So you also have to worry

about the actual track,

the boards coming up
and disintegrating.

- [Andrew] When you're
there as a spectator,

you'll have to keep
your head on a swivel

of whether or not you're gonna

catch a stake in the throat

sh**ting off this racetrack.

[spectators screaming]

- [Rutledge] These races
are pure pandemonium.

And in fact, as the speed
and danger increased,

[dramatic music]
[metal clattering]

fans started referring to the
board tracks as murderdromes.

[dramatic music]

- [Henry] These risks make
board track racing a huge draw,

even more popular than races
like the Indianapolis 500.

- Because of how
dangerous the sport was,

[tires screeching]

board track racing

was a phenomenon.

[dramatic music]

Famously, one year in Chicago,


to see a board track race,

when only 60,000 had showed up

to the Indianapolis


- [Rutledge] You would
assume that safety concerns

is really what ultimately
ended board track racing.

[tires screeching]

But that's not it.

Nobody cared about that.

The Great Depression sunk in

and then suddenly it
just wasn't feasible

to take these tracks
apart and move them around

and try to have whole
races with them.

[mellow music]

- I am glad that I was
not alive in that era

because I would not step foot
on a board track race track.

It's insanity, honestly.

[engines revving]

- Board track racing was
just one of the sports

that adventurous
Americans invented

in the early 20th century.

Polo may have been called a
sport of kings in England,

but the game didn't
take off in the states

until thrill jockeys
developed a version

with a lot more horsepower.

[dramatic music]

- [Bryant] Almost every
sport has its origins

in some real danger.

Polo seems pretty dangerous
with horses flying around

and jockeys with
mallets swinging them

as hard as they can at ba*ls.

But just like imagine
this in a car.

[dramatic music]

- [Announcer] If you're
anxious to risk life and limb,

here's an ideal game, auto polo.

- [Rutlede] We're gonna
take this sport from the UK,

which is so prestigious
and we're just gonna

redneck it down.

We're gonna play
polo out of our cars.

Great idea.

- Auto polo is invented by

Ralph "Pappy" Hankinson in 1911.

He is a Ford dealer
in Topeka, Kansas,

looking for a way
to sell more Fords.

- Hankinson comes up
with a promotional idea,

modeled along the
lines of horse polo,

but instead of riding a horse,

people will be driving one
of these new Model T Fords.

[audience cheering]

[dramatic music]

- [Rutledge] This idea
really came to Pappy

because other people
were doing it.

They were just playing
around in their farms.

And Pappy is really the one
that comes up with the idea

to make formalized rules around
it and call it auto polo.

- [Edward] In auto polo,
you have the driver

and then in the passenger seat

you have the mallet man

and that person's
job is to whack

a large ball about the
size of a basketball

into a goal while
traveling very fast,

leading to accidents,
crashes, all kinds of mayhem.

- [Bryant] Just think
about this, right?

The car's trying to go as fast
as it can to get to the ball,

just like a horse would in polo,

but what if the driver
slams on the brakes?

The mallet man is going flying,

but they're flying
right into a field

with a bunch of other cars.

[dramatic music]

- [Rutledge] People
refer to baseball

as the national pastime,
boxing is the sweet science,

but do you know what
auto polo is known as?

The undertaker's delight.

[dramatic music]

- [Brian] If they
were doing it today,

I would go and watch it.

A couple of drunk good old boys

in a couple of pickup trucks

with some mallet
whacking a ball around

causing all sorts of
mayhem and destruction.

[dramatic music]

- [Henry] Almost overnight,

auto polo goes from country
fields to the big city.

- [Edward] By


after Hankinson
starts the thing,

they're doing auto polo in

Madison Square Garden
in New York City.

- [Rutledge] They started
drawing crowds of 5,000 people

because they would show
up for the competition,

but they would stay
for the carnage.

[dramatic music]

- [Edward] In the course
of a typical match,

cars roll over, they
crash into the stands,

players get ejected
from the cars,

they're suffering
tremendous head injuries.

Some cases losing limbs.

- [Rutledge] It got so bad
that they started having

doctors and nurses as
a part of the teams.

[dramatic music]

It doesn't take long

for the cars to start
getting modified

to be better competitors.

So they might chop the top

or put like a ramming
bar on the front.

I mean it became like
a demolition derby,

but some dude's
hanging out the side.

- [Henry] And it's not just
the players in harm's way.

- [Bryant] You get a
point for each goal,

but if you run over the referee,
you only lose half a point.

- [Rutledge] Can
you imagine a sport

that doesn't punish
you for hitting the ref

with a car?

- And that's why fans
absolutely love it.

[dramatic music]

- [Brian] Here's a
deadly sport in which

the cars are getting destroyed

because they're
hitting each other,

they're running over refs,

people are are losing body parts

because they're getting clipped.

And as fun as that is to watch,

it's a nightmare financially.

- [Rutledge] Obviously
the danger in this sport

is what led to it
going away, right?

No.

It was that people
were like, yeah,

I really don't want
to smash up my car.

It's really expensive.

There's the irony.

[mellow music]

- Auto polo's popularity
ran out of gas

during the Great Depression

due to the high
cost of car repairs.

Well, it turns out that
most insurance companies

won't cover auto polo damage.

- Remember the golden
age of televised stunts

back in the 70s?

Daredevils like Evel
Knievel risked life and limb

as millions of
Americans watched on TV.

And one stunt man soared above
the rest, a mysterious figure

who was willing to go to

any length and
height to entertain.

[light suspenseful music]

- [Jason] In the age of TikTok,

there's all sorts of challenges

and stunts people do to
get attention and likes,

but in the 60s and 70s,

if you wanted to get noticed,

you had to do something big

and it had to be extreme.

[engine revving]

- [Henry] And the biggest
daredevil of the day

was Evel Knievel.

- [Nicole] Evel
Knievel was a master

of clearing extreme distances,

jumping over buses, cars, lions,

things I would never do.

- [Henry] But there is someone

who's out to top Evel Knievel.

- [Natalia] There's
this Canadian guy

in a full body suit and a mask
who shows up on the scene.

He calls himself the Human Fly.

- [Jason] He literally looks
like right out of a comic book.

He even says Evel Knievel

is his archenemy.

Great marketing.

- Right out of the gate he
decides to out-evil Evel

with his own stunt.

He's going to ride an airplane
about 300 miles an hour

on top of the plane.

[mellow music]

In order to pull this off,
they're going to strap him

to this metal pole
on top of the plane

and they have to
run this by the FAA.

- The FAA hears this
harebrained scheme

and their one bit
is wear a helmet.

300 miles per hour
up in the air?

What's a helmet gonna do
if anything goes wrong?

- [Henry] On June 19th,


[dramatic music]

A passenger of one

on top of a Douglas DC8
four-engine jetiner

for a 300-mile-an-hour flight

over California's Mojave Desert.

- This is a major media event.

Brett Musburger
is there from CBS.

Everybody's watching.

- [Nicole] After 15 minutes in
the air, the plane lands

and the Human Fly
waves to the crowd.

[mellow music]

- [Jason] I thought this
was the greatest stunt

I'd ever seen before.

I couldn't believe he survived.

- [Nicole] It seems
to be a success,

but the television crew records
him going to the ambulance

for burns suffered on his legs.

- [Henry] Despite his injuries,

the successful stunt
earned him superhero status

and a Marvel comic book.

But the Human Fly has
something even bigger in store

to upstage his nemesis.

- So the Human Fly's
plan was fantastic.

He said Evel Knievel's
gonna jump 13 buses.

Anybody could just be like,

I'll jump 14 buses,
maybe 15 buses.

[engine revving]

- The Human Fly says that
he's gonna go for 27 buses.

- You'd think that somebody
in his crew would be like,

hey, Human Fly,
like maybe you know,

you don't have to
really do that.

- So his motorcycle engineer
comes up with the idea

to build him a rocket-
powered motorcycle.

He replaces the
motorcycle's engine

with two 1500-pound-thrust
hydrogen peroxide rockets.

There's no laps, no
getting up to speed.

They just place the Harley
at the bottom of the ramp,

the Fly gets on,
presses the button,

holds on tight and prays.

[dramatic music]

- [Henry] He lands short of
the ramp, crashing near bus 19.

[dramatic music]

- [Nicole] He breaks
Evel's record,

but he also pays the price.

He's carried off on a stretcher
with serious injuries.

Here's the crazy part.

He's never heard
from ever again.

- [Jason] As a kid,

I didn't think much of
it when he disappeared,

I guess I just didn't realize it

until it was too late

and I was like, hey, what
happened to the Human Fly?

- No one has ever seen the
Human Fly since that day.

That was it.

I mean, talk about going
out with a blaze of glory.

- In the end, the Human
Fly's time in the limelight

was brief like a rocket-
fueled flash in the pan.


another short-lived fad

had an amateur
daredevil flying high

before crashing
back down to earth.

[upbeat music]

- [Hakeem] Recreational
boating hit its peak in 2005,

and at that time there was
something like 80 million

Americans spending
their weekends

and summers out on the water.

- [Nicole] And what do people
love to do when boating?

Tubing.

[dramatic music]

- [Hakeem] The most fun part is

when you get a little airborne,

[screaming]

but it's like for a
fraction of a second.

[upbeat music]

So somebody got the bright idea,

what if we can make that
airborne time last even longer?

- What I love about
Americans, you got a boat,

let's go out on the water
and have a good day.

Not good enough.

Let's get a rope and
let's put a tube on it.

Not enough.

What if like there's
a device on the tube

that lifts the tube into the air

and flies it around?

- [Henry] In the fall of 2005,

the introduction of kite tubes
takes tubing to new heights.

[boat motor revving]

- Kite tubes,

they don't just bounce
on a couple of waves,

they're made to take flight.

When you hit the wave,
you lift on the handles

and now the tube goes airborne.

- [Nicole] Going up
in the air 20 feet

is nothing for a kite tube.

And depending on
weather conditions,

you could even go
higher than that.

- It's tube, kite, air, boat.

[dramatic music]

People loved it.

- [Hakeem] In the first
nine months or so,

they're selling 2,000
kite tubes a month.

- [Henry] The kite tube
attracts so much attention,

it's named Product of the Year

by the Sporting Goods
Manufacturer's Association.

It's an honor that's
given a little too soon.

[dramatic music]

- When you're in the kite tube,

you're not even strapped in.

There's no safety precautions.

You got two little handles,

then you got your feet in this
little holster but that's it.

- [Brian] There is no
steering mechanism,

there's no braking mechanism.

If something goes awry,

you have no control.

You're crashing
back down to earth.

[dramatic music]
[man whooping]

- [Steve] When you
hit 25 miles per hour,

you get about 10 feet of air.

But you go a little faster,
you're 20, 30, 40 feet.

You're like four stories high
right now, that's a high fall.

[dramatic music]

- [Nicole] If you
fall from that height,

the water is not going
to be cushiony and soft.

It is going to be like
smacking a brick wall

at 50 miles an hour.

- Ohhh!

- So of course there are
dozens and dozens of injuries.

People would break bones,
would knock out teeth,

would just skip like a
stone across the water

and two people actually died.

- [Henry] The kite
tube's popularity

is quickly overshadowed

by its reputation
for injury and death.

- [Don] Kite tubes are only
around for about a year

when they're taken
off the market.

- [Brian] The kite tube is
a little bit like Icarus.

It flew too close to
the sun and it maimed

and k*lled too many
people and it was gone.

[water splashing]

But what an idea.

What an idea.

- It was reckless,
it was short-lived

and for those who tried it
and survived, unforgettable.

- Remember the expression,
get off your high horse?

Well, for certain thrill
seekers, decades ago,

the drop was steep and
the landing was wet.

[mellow music]

- [Adam] So it's the
turn of the century,

Coney Island is still
America's playground.

One thing that has captured
America's consciousness

in their leisure activities
are diving horses.

[water splashing]

- Coney Island is like
the Disneyland of the day

and the diving horses
are an immediate hit.

Even Thomas Edison was
at one of these shows

filming the horse plunging as
part of his early experiment

with moving pictures.

- [Henry] Then a man named
Doc Carver enters the picture.

He's got an idea to up the ante.

- In 1906,

Carver introduces
Lorena Lawrence,

known as the Girl in
Red, diving on horses.

She gets on the horse

and then they dive
together 40 feet down.

[dramatic music]
[water splashing]

- [Rutledge] Even when you hear
it, it sounds preposterous.

A horse that can high dive?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but
there's also a person on it.

Neither of those make sense.

- [Henry] By the 1920s,

Carver's ready to introduce
horse diving's next big star.

- [Negin] This 19-year-old
woman in small town Georgia,

Sonora Webster, sees
an ad in the newspaper

and it's like, do
you like horses,

do you like to dive,
do you like to travel?

And she's like, yeah, that's me.

So she responds to this ad.

- Sonora and Company set up shop

on the steel pier in
Atlantic City, New Jersey,

and the audience
response is massive.

- The tanks that these
horses are jumping into

are only about 10
to 14 feet deep.

Compare that to Olympic divers,

their tanks have a depth
of 16 feet at minimum.

[splashing]

- Very many people have asked me

if I'm not afraid
to ride the horses,

and all I can say is that I
would never ride them if I was.

- [Henry] Sonora is horse
diving's most renowned rider.

But in 1931, tragedy strikes.

- [Bryant] Usually
she closes her eyes

when she hits the water.

One day the horse gets off
in the wrong direction.

Webster's not sure
of her landing,

and she has her eyes open.

When she hit the water,

the force detached

both of her retinas.

She would be blind
from that day forward.

- [Henry] Sonora spends
a year recuperating,

and then she starts horse
diving again, blind.

- Imagine taking that
leap on a horse

into a pool of water

and not being able
to see your landing

or know when it's gonna happen.

- [Hakeem] Sonora
continues her horse dives

in Atlantic City for
another 11 years,

and that cements her in history

as the last great
horse diving star.

- [Adam] It finally
stops in 1978

and it's not out of concern
for the rider's welfare,

it's actually because
of the potential

of profound injury to the horse.

- As horse diving faded,
[mellow music]

Americans hit the
water on surfboards

and then someone
had the bright idea

to put wheels on a board
and hit the streets.

Today, skateboarding
is an Olympic sport

where riders are
judged on their style,

but back in the 70s,
what really mattered

was how fast you could go.

[upbeat music]

- [Jason] Skateboarding, it
starts as just a local fad,

dominating the Southern
California culture.

By the 1970s, it grew to
become a national trend.

- [Henry] Skateboard
competitions begin

to pop up everywhere,

but those early competitions
usually involve simple tricks

or maneuvering around
orange street cones.

- The boards in those
days were primitive,

nothing like today.

There were basically wood planks

with roller skate
wheels attached.

- [Jason] How fast can we go

before we burn the wheels
into molten plastic?

And the answer was Signal Hill.

- [Henry] In 1975, in the
hilltop town of Signal Hill

near Long Beach, a promoter
decides to launch a contest

that will have competitors
racing downhill

in what he calls speed runs.

- [Nicole] Signal
Hill is about 365 feet

above Long Beach in California.

It has this huge 30-degree
incline on Hill Street,

which is perfect
for these insane

downhill speed competitions.

- [Hakeem] When a skater
goes down the incline,

their speed increases
with the time squared.

After one second,
you have a speed.

After two seconds, you
have four times that speed,

so your speed increases rapidly.

The higher the hill, the
bigger the speed you gain.

- [Jason] The skateboarders
could possibly

reach speeds of up
to 50 miles an hour.

Now, put this into perspective.

The US government has just
put a national speed limit

on automobiles at


What could go wrong?

- [Henry] The answer?

Plenty.

Only six competitors
dare to show up

but after getting a sneak
peek of the steep downhill,

four drop out, leaving
just Guy Grundy

and Garrison Hitchcock.

- [Jason] Grundy,
he comes prepared

in a leather suit and a helmet.

Other people,

not so much.

One guy shows up in
shorts and t-shirt.

He looks at the hill and he's
like, no, I'm not doing that.

You guys are nuts.

- [Michele] Grundy ends up
winning the competition.

[dramatic music]

He sets a downhill speed
record, 50.2 miles per hour.

- Garrison Hitchcock, he
doesn't walk away so happy.

He falls, dislocates
his shoulder

and he's whisked
away in an ambulance.

- [Henry] But that doesn't put
a damper on these speed runs.

Quite the opposite.

It makes them even more popular.

- So the next event occurs

and there's thousands
of spectators.

They are rowdy, they want
to see somebody wipe out.

[dramatic music]

- In 1977,

one of Signal Hill's
first female competitors

is a 21-year-old
named Tina Trefethen.

She tops the speed record
at over 57 miles an hour.



Here's the bad news.

She hits a pole, she
breaks both wrists,

cracks some ribs, and
she even loses a lung.

- [Henry] The chaos
of these speed runs

eventually gets the
attention of lawmakers.

- In 1980,

LA County passed a law that said

the top speed for a skateboard
was 10 miles an hour.

So it effectively just ended

all of those speed
runs overnight,

which also means that none
of those speed records

that have been set would
ever be broken again.

[mellow music]
- Shattered bones heal,

but holding a speed record
in a defunct skateboard race?

That is something that
can never be broken.

- Back in the 1800s,

riding the rails was the
best way to see the country.

Train tracks
crisscrossed America,

connecting cities from
sea to shining sea,

but only the most
adventurous passengers

would dare to ride
the unique railways

found at Coney Island.

[upbeat music]

- [Adam] Coney
Island in the 1880s

is where the entire
world comes to play

and be mystified and astounded.

And the marquee
attraction of the day

was the Switchback Railway

and it was raking in
the modern equivalent

of $22,000 a day.

[dramatic music]

- [Natalia] The Switchback
topped out at

six miles per hour.

This is really slow compared
to a modern rollercoaster,

but think that back then,

not only were roller
coasters the new thing,

but very few people were
driving around in cars,

so it was actually
pretty exciting.

- [Bryant] The people who
own the amusement piers

begin to think, well,

how can they up the ante?

How can they make it go faster?

How can they
increase the thrill?

- [Henry] What they
come up with is

the first American
coaster to go upside down.

It's called the
Flip Flap Railway.

And at the time, it was
the fastest freestanding

rollercoaster in the world
because it has to be.

- [Hakeem] The key to making

this rollercoaster
work is speed,

so that once you start
going around the loop,

you don't stall at

the top and fall down.

- [Nicole] Because there's
nothing but your own body weight

and G-force holding you down,

you have no seat belt,
you have no harness,

you have nothing but yourself,

God and the wind.

[dramatic music]
[people screaming]

- [Adam] The Flip Flap
Railway is a circle

that's about 25
feet in diameter,

and in order to
generate enough speed,

there's an almost
pure vertical drop

where the cars reach

45 miles an hour.

[screaming]

- [Don] To put it
in perspective,

the first auto race in the US

is held the same year
the Flip Flap opens.

And the cars in that race
average seven miles per hour.

Seven.

- [Nicole] So the Flip
Flap is extremely fast.

And even in today's standards,


roller coaster is getting it.

- [Henry] The speed
is ahead of its time.

But as far as safety measures,

they're making that
up as they go along.

- In the late 1800s,

there was no real regulation.

I mean, amusement
parks were new,

and so this was
all experimental.

- Modern roller coasters are
made with this teardrop shape.

That way you pull less
G-forces at the bottom

than you otherwise would
in a circular design.

- Just for perspective,

a space launch
generates three Gs.

[rocket roaring]

Six Gs is the
maximum a human being

without protective
equipment can really stand.

- [Hakeem] So the
riders of the Flip Flap,

they will pull 12 Gs.

This is not safe.

- [Adam] So what 12 Gs means
is you'll feel a pressure

12 times your own body

weight pressing down on you.

So that means a 50-pound
child would feel 600 pounds

of invisible weight
pressing down on them.

- [Brian] The
scariest rollercoaster

that any of us
have been on today

tops out at about five Gs.

These people were putting
these poor suckers

on a wooden trolley cart

that whipped around like that.

Astronauts couldn't
put up with it.

Do you understand
what I'm saying?

Like astronauts
training to go to space

don't deal with that many Gs.

- [Nicole] By today's standards,

we get on these roller
coasters and we feel at home.

We have seat belts,
we have harnesses.

Everything is holding us in.

Not then.

- [Adam] People are
without a harness,

just with enough money
to ride the rollercoaster

and a little bit
of a death wish.

- [Brian] People
were passing out,

they were getting bloody noses.

Like they were seeing God.

Their brains were rattling
around their skulls.

They were getting
flattened like pancakes,

and then they'd
have to pay a nickel

or something like that
for the pleasure of it.

- Coney Island's Flip Flap
Railway closed for good in 1902

because ultimately
it was a money loser.

- Today, in-flight entertainment

for your next plane trip
might include watching a movie

or bingeing your
favorite TV show.

But a century ago,
in-flight entertainment

meant something else entirely.

[engines revving]

- [Natalia] In the 1920s,

there's a lot of
enthusiasm about aviation.

People are really excited about

exploring the
skies in the world.

- [Hakeem] World w*r I
had a huge impact

on aircraft technology.

They were made
more maneuverable,

they were made faster,

but when World w*r I ended,

there was a surplus
of airplanes.

So what did the government do?

They began to sell
them to civilians.

- [Jason] In the
true American spirit,

these new airplane owners,

they look for a way
to monetize their new hobby.

- [Henry] What they come
up with is barnstorming.

[dramatic music]

- What they would do
is land these planes

in the middle of
these huge farms

and they would invite people
to go for rides with them.

And of course, they're
charging a fee for this.

- Some pilots were
just raking in cash.

It was all about trying
to make your ride

better than the next person.

So it very quickly became
a game of showmanship.

[engine roaring]

Because they were
trying to up the ante,

they got the idea of maybe

we could take someone
else up there with us

and do some stunts on the plane,

but fly low enough that
people could see it.

And that's really where

the term aerialist came from.

- [Rutlidge] We had wing walkers

and people that would
stand on top of the plane.

When it got really crazy is
when the wing walkers decided

maybe I could run from
the wing of this plane

and jump onto the
wings of another plane.

No parachute, no tethers,
just running and going for it.

I mean, talk about dangerous.

Sheesh.

- [Henry] The stunts are hair
raising, potentially deadly,

and with no government
oversight, anything goes.

- One early barnstorming
celebrity was named Eddie Angel,

who wouldd perform a stunt
called the Dive of Death,

which he would do at night.

He would actually free
fall from about 5,000 feet,

holding two flashlights so
you could keep track of him

and he wouldn't
open his parachute

until he could see the ground.

- [Romi] You want to play

a tennis match a
mile up in the air?

They actually set one up.

Were they watching
the tennis match

or were they hoping for

something bad to happen?

Don't know, but it
was entertaining.

[dramatic music]

- A 10-year-old girl by

the name of Mildred Unger,

she does the Charleston
on the wings of a biplane.

Now, that's crazy
enough just to say,

hey, she danced on the
wings of a biplane,

but she did it without a harness

and she did it without a tether

and presumably without
a loving parent.

- [Henry] Barnstorming
accidents are frequent.

In 1923 alone, there are


85 people are k*lled
and 126 injured.

Aviation safety
becomes a top priority.

[dramatic music]

- President Coolidge passed
the Air Commerce Act in 1926,

which basically
said all the planes

had to be certified
and inspected.

- [Henry] And for the first time

pilots now need to be licensed.

- Today there's an
FAA and restrictive

life insurance
policies that ensure

that this kind of thing
will never happen again.

[engine revving]

- I do always
admire the stuntmen

and the people who are willing

to put their lives,
sometimes stupidly,

in danger for our entertainment.

They may lose life,
they may lose limb,

[expl*si*n]

but I posit that these people

are just as heroic as astronauts

because they're putting
their bodies on the line

for our entertainment.

[dramatic music]

- Looking back on all the things

that we did to get our
adrenaline pumping,

whether it was racing
cars at a murderdrome

or high diving on horses

or cutting our teeth on
an extreme water slide,

we didn't always
stick the landing,

but the thrills were
usually worth the spills

and that's why our Hazardous
History was so exhilarating.

[dramatic music]