It’s rainin’ men! First, Scottish wingsuit jumper Liam Byrne jumped to his death off an Alp, then French comedian Bun Hay Mean fell off his apartment balcony. Now, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner, the subject of the documentaries Space Jump and Mission to the Edge of Space, has lost his battle with gravity (I myself have been battling gravity for years, and curse the day Isaac Newton ever invented it). Baumgartner, 56, lost control on July 17 while paragliding and crashed into someone’s swimming pool in Italy. Some of his more famous jumps were his 2012 leap (in a pressurized suit) from a balloon in the stratosphere (24 miles up, also breaking the sound barrier). He also jumped off Jesus in Rio, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, and across the English Channel (Wikipedia has yet to explain that one to me). Baumgartner—who dated beauty queens and journalists alike—lost his Facebook page and moved to Switzerland when his far-right, anti-immigrant statements caused many former fans to suggest where he might jump next. “If the Wright brothers hadn't put their lives on the line,” Baumgartner said, “we would not be flying around the world these days. So we need pioneers.”
