Hazardous History with Henry Winkler 1x2

1. Did you know that there was a time

2. when daredevils performed hundreds of feet in the air

3. without a net?

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

5. Talk about dangerous, sheesh!

6. Do you remember when a night at the ball game

7. could become an epic rampage?

8. He tells his players to grab bats

9. and go start walloping these drunk fans.

10. Or when a wrestling bear in America

11. was a popular spectator stunt?

12. This was on 13th Street in Manhattan.

13. You could go into Manhattan and watch a bear fight a man.

14. It's such a dumb idea that it is brilliant.

15. These are the things we used to do

16. for fun, for money, or maybe out of boredom

17. that we'll never see again.

18. Were they dangerous?

19. Certainly.

20. Deadly?

21. Occasionally.

22. But, boy, wasn't it exciting?

23. Remember when daredevils like Evel Knievel

24. captivated the nation?

25. We all gathered around our TVs and held our breath

26. as they risked their lives to do the impossible.

27. Well, there was one mysterious figure

28. who tried to outdo every last one of them.

29. In the age of TikTok,

30. there's all sorts of challenges and stunts people do

31. to get attention and likes,

32. but in the '60s and '70s,

33. if you wanted to get noticed,

34. you had to do something big

35. and it had to be extreme.

36. And the biggest daredevil of the day

37. was Evel Knievel.

38. Evel Knievel was a master of clearing extreme distances,

39. jumping over buses, cars, lions, things I would never do.

40. He's a superstar.

41. Every kid wants Evel Knievel merch,

42. whether it's a toy or a T-shirt.

43. But there is someone

44. who's out to top Evel Knievel.

45. There's this Canadian guy in a full body suit and a mask

46. who shows up on the scene,

47. he calls himself The Human Fly.

48. He literally looks like right out of a comic book.

49. He even says Evel Knievel is his archenemy.

50. Great marketing.

51. The Human Fly was mysterious, he was theatrical,

52. no one really even knew his identity.

53. Right out of the gate,

54. he decides to out-evil Evel with his own stunt.

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

56. on top of the plane.

57. In order to pull this off,

58. they're going to strap him to this metal pole

59. on top of the plane,

60. and they have to run this by the FAA.

61. The FAA hears this harebrained scheme

62. and their one bit is "Wear a helmet."

63. 300 miles per hour, up in the air,

64. what's a helmet gonna do if anything goes wrong?

65. On June 20th, 1976, he boards his flight.

66. A passenger of one

67. on top of a Douglas DC-8 four engine jetliner

68. for a 300-mile-an-hour flight

69. over California's Mojave Desert.

70. This is a major media event.

71. Brent Musburger is there from CBS, everybody's watching.

72. After 15 minutes in the air,

73. the plane lands and The Human Fly waves to the crowd.

74. I thought this was the greatest stunt

75. I'd ever seen before.

76. I couldn't believe he survived.

77. It seems to be a success,

78. but the television crew records him going to the ambulance

79. for burns suffered on his legs.

80. Fly, tell me what happened?

81. What about the burns?

82. Well, traveling at that speed,

83. it's unavoidable.

84. I've never hit speeds like that,

85. the pressure was tremendous.

86. Despite his injuries,

87. the successful stunt earned him superhero status

88. and a Marvel comic book.

89. But The Human Fly has something even bigger in store

90. to upstage his nemesis.

91. So The Human Fly's plan was fantastic.

92. He said Evel Knievel's

93. gonna jump 13 buses.

94. Anybody could just be like,

95. "I'll jump 14 buses, maybe 15 buses."

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

97. You think that somebody in his crew

98. would be like, "Hey, Human Fly,

99. like maybe, you know, you don't have to really do that."

100. Everything seems perfect,

101. but there are some physical limitations with the venue.

102. It's basically nowhere near enough room

103. to gain the speed he needs to pull off the stunt.

104. So his motorcycle engineer comes in with the idea

105. to build him a rocket-powered motorcycle.

106. He replaces the motorcycle's engine

107. with two 1,500-pound thrust hydrogen peroxide rockets.

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

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

110. The Fly gets on, presses the button,

111. holds on tight and prays.

112. He lands short of the ramp, crashing near bus 19.

113. He breaks Evel's record, but he also pays the price.

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

115. Here's the crazy part, he's never heard from ever again.

116. As a kid, I didn't think much of it when he disappeared.

117. I guess I just didn't realize it until it was too late,

118. and I was like,

119. "Hey, what happened to The Human Fly?"

120. No one has ever seen The Human Fly since that day.

121. That was it.

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

123. Just like daredevils on two wheels

124. define gravity with rubber tires and roaring engines,

125. a century ago in America's heartland,

126. a unique brand of entertainment took off

127. to even greater heights.

128. In the 1920s,

129. there was a lot of enthusiasm about aviation.

130. People are really excited

131. about exploring the skies in the world.

132. World War I had a huge impact on aircraft technology.

133. They were made more maneuverable,

134. they were made faster.

135. But when World War I ended,

136. there was a surplus of airplanes.

137. So what did the government do?

138. They began to sell them to civilians.

139. In the true American spirit, these new airplane owners,

140. they look for a way to monetize their new hobby.

141. What they come up with is barnstorming.

142. What they would do is land these planes

143. in the middle of these huge farms,

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

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

146. Some pilots were just raking in cash.

147. It was all about trying to make your ride

148. better than the next person.

149. So it very quickly became a game of showmanship.

150. Because they were trying to up the ante,

151. they got the idea

152. of maybe we could take someone else up there with us

153. and do some stunts on the plane,

154. but fly low enough that people could see it.

155. And that's really where the term aerialist came from.

156. We had wing walkers

157. and people that would stand on top of the plane.

158. When it got really crazy is when the wing walkers decided

159. "Maybe I could run from the wing of this plane

160. and jump onto the wings of another plane."

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

162. I mean, talk about dangerous, sheesh!

163. The stunts are hair-raising,

164. potentially deadly,

165. and with no government oversight, anything goes.

166. One early barnstorming celebrity was named Eddie Angel,

167. who would perform a stunt called The Dive of Death,

168. which he would do at night.

169. He would actually freefall from about 5,000 feet

170. holding two flashlights, so you could keep track of him,

171. and he wouldn't open his parachute

172. until he could see the ground.

173. You wanna play a tennis match a mile up in the air?

174. They actually set one up.

175. Were they watching the tennis match,

176. or were they hoping for something bad to happen?

177. Don't know, but it was entertaining.

178. A 10-year-old girl by the name of Mildred Unger,

179. she does the Charleston on the wings of a biplane.

180. Now that's crazy enough just to say,

181. "Hey, she danced on the wings of a biplane,"

182. but she did it without a harness,

183. and she did it without a tether,

184. and, presumably, without a loving parent.

185. Barnstorming accidents are frequent.

186. In 1923 alone, there are 179 documented incidents.

187. 85 people are killed and 126 injured.

188. Aviation safety becomes a top priority.

189. President Coolidge passed the Air Commerce Act in 1926,

190. which basically said all the planes

191. had to be certified and inspected.

192. And for the first time,

193. pilots now need to be licensed.

194. Today there's an FAA

195. and restrictive life insurance policies

196. that ensure that this kind of thing will never happen again.

197. I do always admire the stuntmen

198. and the people who are willing

199. to put their lives, sometimes stupidly,

200. in danger for our entertainment.

201. They may lose life, they may lose limb,

202. but I posit

203. that these people are just as heroic as astronauts,

204. 'cause they're putting their bodies on the line

205. for our entertainment.

206. After getting grounded by regulation,

207. the barnstormers thrilling chapter came to an end.

208. But for those who got to see it,

209. it was something special.

210. And looking up at the skies was never the same again.

211. Long before the X Games,

212. there was a place called Signal Hill,

213. where they took a new trend

214. and they pushed it way beyond its intended limit.

215. Skateboarding, it starts as just a local fad,

216. dominating the Southern California culture.

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

218. Skateboard competitions begin

219. to pop up everywhere,

220. but those early competitions usually involve simple tricks

221. or maneuvering around orange street cones.

222. The boards in those days were primitive,

223. nothing like today.

224. There are basically wood planks

225. with roller skate wheels attached.

226. How fast can we go before we burn the wheels,

227. you know, into molten plastic?

228. And the answer was Signal Hill.

229. In 1975, in the hilltop town of Signal Hill

230. near Long Beach,

231. a promoter decides to launch a contest

232. that will have competitors racing downhill

233. in what he calls speed runs.

234. Signal Hill is about 365 feet

235. above Long Beach in California.

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

237. which is perfect

238. for these insane downhill speed competitions.

239. When a skater goes down the incline,

240. their speed increases with the time squared.

241. After one second, you have a speed,

242. after two seconds, you have four times that speed,

243. so your speed increases rapidly.

244. The higher the hill, the bigger the speeds you gain.

245. The skateboarders could possibly reach speeds

246. of up to 50 miles an hour.

247. Now, put this into perspective,

248. the US government has just put a national speed limit

249. on automobiles at 55 miles an hour.

250. What could go wrong?

251. The answer? Plenty.

252. Only six competitors dare to show up,

253. but after getting a sneak peek of the steep downhill,

254. four drop out,

255. leaving just Guy Grundy and Garrison Hitchcock.

256. Grundy, he comes prepared in a leather suit and a helmet,

257. other people, not so much.

258. One guy shows up in shorts and T-shirt,

259. he looks at the hill and he's like,

260. "Uh, no, I'm not doing that.

261. You guys are nuts."

262. Skateboarding typically

263. is like a couple tricks down the sidewalk,

264. maybe you hop the curb, things like that.

265. There is no competitions like this,

266. nobody is prepared for the speed.

267. Grundy ends up winning the competition.

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

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

270. he falls, dislocates his shoulder,

271. and he's whisked away in an ambulance.

272. But that doesn't put a damper on these speed runs,

273. quite the opposite, it makes them even more popular.

274. So the next event occurs,

275. and there's thousands of spectators.

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

277. Some competitors modify their skateboards,

278. hoping for better aerodynamics.

279. They come up with this thing called the skate car,

280. which literally looks like a futuristic coffin/rocket.

281. They have these friction brakes for stopping,

282. but steering wheels are not allowed.

283. So these things are actually more dangerous

284. than just a regular old-fashioned skateboard.

285. So if your brakes fail,

286. you are gonna go wherever it takes you.

287. I mean, that is insane.

288. Some people would call that stupid.

289. By 1976, word has gotten out

290. about the downhill speed racing, thousands of spectators.

291. It's a national news event.

292. And when you see those highlights,

293. you're like, "How is this allowed?"

294. In 1977, one of Signal Hill's first female competitors

295. is a 21 year old named Tina Trefethen.

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

297. 57!

298. Here's the bad news,

299. she hits a pole.

300. She breaks both wrists, cracks some ribs,

301. and she even loses a lung.

302. The chaos of these speed runs

303. eventually gets the attention of lawmakers.

304. In 1980, LA County passed a law that said,

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

306. So it effectively just ended

307. all of those speed runs overnight,

308. which also means that none of those speed records

309. that have been set would ever be broken again.

310. Remember the expression, "You can lead a horse to water,

311. but you can't make him drink?"

312. Well, in the late 1800s,

313. the question was, "Can you make him jump in?"

314. So it's the turn of the century,

315. Coney Island is still America's playground.

316. One thing that has captured America's consciousness

317. in their leisure activities are diving horses.

318. Coney Island is like the Disneyland of the day,

319. and the diving horses are an immediate hit.

320. Even Thomas Edison was at one of these shows,

321. filming the horse plunging

322. as part of his early experiment with moving pictures.

323. Then a man named Doc Carver enters the picture.

324. He's got an idea to up the ante.

325. In 1906, Carver introduces Lorena Lawrence

326. known as The Girl in Red diving on horses.

327. She gets on the horse,

328. and then they dive together 40 feet down.

329. Even when you hear it, it sounds preposterous.

330. A horse that can high dive?

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

332. Neither of those makes sense.

333. A horse weighs easily over a thousand pounds.

334. So a 1,000-pound horse hitting water from four stories above,

335. will make contact at roughly 30,000 pounds of force.

336. Not only is it hard on the horses,

337. it is wildly dangerous for the rider.

338. In 1907, a 19 year old named Oscar Smith

339. was killed at an event in San Antonio,

340. and he was filling in for Lorena.

341. By the 1920s, Carver's ready to introduce

342. horse diving's next big star.

343. This 19-year-old woman in small town Georgia,

344. Sonora Webster sees an ad in the newspaper,

345. and it's like, "Do you like horses,

346. do you like to dive, do you like to travel?"

347. And she's like, "Yeah, that's me."

348. So she responds to this ad.

349. Sonora and company set up shop at the Steel Pier

350. in Atlantic City, New Jersey,

351. and the audience response is massive.

352. The tanks that these horses are jumping into

353. are only about 10 to 14 feet deep.

354. Compare that to Olympic divers,

355. their tanks have a depth of 16 feet at minimum.

356. Sonora is horse diving's most renowned rider.

357. But in 1931, tragedy strikes.

358. Usually, she closes her eyes when she hits the water.

359. One day, the horse gets off in the wrong direction.

360. Webster's not sure of her landing,

361. and she has her eyes open.

362. When she hit the water,

363. the force detached both of her retinas.

364. She would be blind from that day forward.

365. Sonora spends a year recuperating,

366. and then she starts horse diving again, blind.

367. Imagine taking that leap on a horse into a pool of water

368. and not being able to see your landing,

369. or know when it's gonna happen.

370. Sonora continues her horse dives in Atlantic City

371. for another 11 years,

372. and that cements her in history

373. as the last great horse diving star.

374. It finally stops in 1978,

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

376. it's actually because of the potential

377. of profound injury to the horse.

378. The 1970s were a tough time

379. for the average American family.

380. There was a gas shortage, widespread unemployment,

381. and the highest inflation since the 1940s.

382. The whole country was feeling the pain,

383. including America's favorite pastime.

384. In 1974, it's a hard time for baseball.

385. One of the top teams, the Milwaukee Brewers,

386. is getting less than 12,000 fans in the stands,

387. The Oakland A's,

388. they're the reigning World Series champions,

389. they got Reggie Jackson on their team,

390. and they can't sell 10,000 tickets.

391. If the very best teams can't fill their stadiums,

392. then the team that's not even doing very well at all,

393. like the Cleveland Indians,

394. they're gonna have a lot of leftover hotdogs

395. at the end of a game.

396. Hoping to draw a crowd,

397. Cleveland's front office comes up

398. with an innovative marketing ploy to boost revenue.

399. 10 Cent Beer Night.

400. Offer people cheap beer, get people in the stands,

401. and they feel like it's gonna be a home run.

402. To their surprise, 25,000 fans show up for this promotion.

403. And they start drinking 65,000 cups of Stroh's beer.

404. The trouble is evident as early as the second inning

405. when a woman jumps onto the field, runs out,

406. lifts her shirt, exposing her breasts to the crowd,

407. and then tries to kiss the home plate umpire.

408. Soon after that, a young man starts peeling off his clothes

409. and streaks completely across the outfield.

410. Streakers on the field, that's bad enough,

411. but the home team is behind,

412. and in the stands, the crowd is going wild.

413. The beer vendors, they're so overwhelmed,

414. they abandon their posts altogether.

415. The kegs are now unattended,

416. so people are able to just pour as much beer as they want.

417. Can you imagine, today,

418. you have security guards, you have people IDing for drinks,

419. back then, people were ransacking the place.

420. At the end of the ninth inning

421. with the beer flowing freely and the score tied up,

422. the Indians are on the verge of a comeback win,

423. and the event turns into absolute pandemonium.

424. The crowd gets rowdier and rowdier,

425. they start throwing beer bottles,

426. they start throwing trash onto the field, batteries.

427. They start throwing firecrackers

428. into the opposing team's bullpen, the Texas Rangers.

429. And they start yelling back up into the stands,

430. the fans start yelling back down to them.

431. People start storming the field by the hundreds.

432. People are starting fights with the players,

433. everybody's out of control.

434. 50 stadium officers

435. and two off-duty Cleveland policemen

436. are completely overwhelmed by the mob of drunk fans

437. and have to call for assistance.

438. It was just so unsafe.

439. Eventually the players were like,

440. "Well, we gotta defend ourselves."

441. Billy Martin, the manager of the Texas Rangers,

442. he tells his players to grab bats

443. and go start walloping these drunk fans.

444. When I saw 10 Cent Beer Night on the news,

445. it looked more

446. like what I imagined the Roman Colosseum was like,

447. than a placid day at the park with the family.

448. With only one out to go, and the score still tied,

449. umpire Nestor Chylak finally has enough of the chaos,

450. and calls the game a forfeit.

451. I just think it was just a bunch of kids

452. that just couldn't handle their liquor,

453. and those aren't the real good baseball fans in Cleveland.

454. 10 Cent Beer Night is a perfect example

455. of how we're our own worst enemy.

456. We took our shirts off, we ran on the field,

457. we started a riot.

458. We can't be trusted with 10-cent beers!

459. Today, baseball teams constantly run promotions

460. to get the fans into the stands,

461. but they tend to be more family friendly

462. than 10 Cent Beer Night.

463. There's Cap Day, Bobblehead Day,

464. even Bring Your Dog to the Game Day.

465. But back in the '70s,

466. there was one promotional stunt

467. that tried to outdo all the rest.

468. In the mid '70s,

469. you had discoteques popping up all over America,

470. you had movies like "Saturday Night Fever."

471. Disco is just dominating the airwaves.

472. Still, not everyone loves disco,

473. and those who don't,

474. the hard rock faithful, are passionate haters.

475. So there's this DJ in Chicago, Steve Dahl,

476. a diehard rock and roller,

477. who gets fired from his radio station

478. when they switch over to a disco format,

479. and he is out for revenge.

480. He had the idea to take this hatred

481. and channel it into an event called Disco Demolition Night.

482. They're going to start a fire and burn disco records,

483. sort of an effigy of the whole disco movement at large.

484. Dahl brings the idea

485. to White Sox owner Bill Veeck.

486. He's notorious for staging stunts

487. like giving away live animals,

488. and having weddings at home plate.

489. So, naturally, Veeck agrees to the stunt,

490. and they arrange for it to take place

491. between a doubleheader on July 12th, 1979.

492. It was also teen night,

493. and if they brought a disco record with them,

494. it was only 98 cents.

495. So it was encouraging

496. this rowdier sort of younger clientele

497. to come with their disco records ready to burn.

498. It's just a combination of energy and chaos

499. that's bound to create, well, something unforgettable.

500. They expected 20,000 people to show up,

501. 50,000 people show up,

502. which is even more than seats they have in the stadium.

503. Pretty soon, the crowds are overwhelming the gate.

504. Fans are supposed to drop their disco albums

505. in collection bins as they enter

506. to be burned later.

507. But as they crash through the gates, many don't.

508. A lot of people ended up

509. getting to their seats with their records and they're

510. sitting there through nine innings of baseball,

511. drinking more and more beer,

512. and they start throwing their records out onto the field.

513. Everybody's here to have a good time,

514. but there's no reason to disrupt the ball game.

515. They're slicing through the air,

516. they're hitting people.

517. Oh, boy, look at that,

518. it just missed Gaedel.

519. That is very dangerous.

520. It only continues.

521. There are firecrackers and empty beer bottles

522. landing next to the players right on the field.

523. Don't spoil the night for everybody else,

524. or we'll have to call off the game and close the park!

525. The game is paused several times

526. due to the hail of foreign objects.

527. People are out of their minds at this point.

528. And what do you do when people are out of their minds?

529. You start a big bonfire in the middle of it.

530. That'll calm 'em down, right?

531. At 8:45 PM,

532. Dahl has the crate of records wheeled out to center field,

533. Disco sucks!

534. - Disco sucks! - Disco sucks!

535. Disco sucks! - Disco sucks!

536. He riles up the crowd

537. and then sets off dynamite inside the crate.

538. Yeah!

539. Records are flying everywhere.

540. People are climbing onto the field,

541. they're throwing trash.

542. Total chaos.

543. So the umpire decides

544. he's not going to go on with the second game.

545. Disco Demolition turns into a disco inferno.

546. Can you imagine 7,000 fans having free rein on the field

547. for 40 minutes?

548. Anything that wasn't nailed down,

549. they were gonna be trying to take,

550. because baseball fans, they love a good souvenir.

551. It just sounds like

552. really once in a lifetime experience.

553. Flying records were the beginning of the end

554. for other baseball promotions, like Bat Day,

555. when 50,000 fans would be handed a bat on their way in.

556. Pro wrestling has captivated audiences,

557. in person and on television, for decades.

558. Its characters are larger than life,

559. and some had names pulled from the animal kingdom,

560. like Junkyard Dog, Gorilla Monsoon,

561. and George "The Animal" Steel.

562. But going back to the 1800s,

563. America had some real animals in the ring.

564. For most of human history,

565. if a man was wrestling a bear,

566. it was not by choice, it was a matter of survival,

567. and then it became a form of entertainment

568. in the 1800s.

569. The very first sanctioned

570. man-versus-bear wrestling match in America

571. took place in 1877.

572. Maybe you're picturing some backwoods venue,

573. maybe in the woods, or on some farm

574. surrounded by hay bales.

575. This was on 13th Street in Manhattan.

576. You could go into Manhattan

577. and watch a bear fight a man.

578. The place is a 300-seat auditorium in New York City

579. with a tavern on the ground floor.

580. And the man who ran the tavern

581. actually had the idea to set up this event

582. as a way to sell more beer.

583. The beer selling attraction is a success,

584. and some unlikely stars are born.

585. The funny thing

586. about the man-versus- bear wrestling matches

587. is that the bears are the ones who become famous.

588. Lena and Martin, two of the bears,

589. go out on tour fighting whoever will take them on.

590. Now, surprisingly, Lena's fame would dim

591. when she kills an opponent in 1878.

592. Danger be damned, the matches don't lose steam.

593. In fact, they gain mainstream attention.

594. Gene DuBois, a Canadian wrestler, decided to buy a bear

595. and take it on kind of a sideshow type of experience

596. where go to venues and he would wrestle this bear

597. in front of crowds.

598. His name was Terrible Ted.

599. Gene DuBois took Terrible Ted around

600. to wrestle famous wrestlers, including Rocky Johnson,

601. who most people today would know better

602. as the father of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

603. While all of this seems like the wild olden days,

604. man-versus-bear matches are still happening in the 1980s.

605. If I get down low on him,

606. I'm gonna take him.

607. I've got it in my blood, I'm gonna take him.

608. They're doing this at local bars...

609. Watch out!

610. Even shopping malls.

611. Imagine you're going into the mall just to buy some sneakers

612. and you see a guy wrestling a bear.

613. Hit him in the head!

614. I remember when I was a kid

615. seeing highlights of Chuck Wepner.

616. Chuck Wepner was the Bayonne Bleeder

617. who fought Muhammad Ali,

618. he inspired the "Rocky" movie.

619. He ended up later in his career

620. just wrestling bears, fighting bears.

621. In the end, these wrestling matches

622. go away for safety reasons,

623. but not for our safety, for the bears' safety.

624. I mean, that's not the way you thought

625. that was gonna go at all.

626. In-person wrestling events have always been a draw,

627. but by the 1950s, the television age was in full swing,

628. and soon promoters decided that their next big spectacle

629. was going to take place where no one had wrestled before.

630. In 1949, an adventure writer named Wilmon Menard

631. publishes an article that says,

632. "Octopus Wrestling Is My Hobby,"

633. and this gets a lot of people's attention.

634. "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"

635. was one of the biggest movies of the 1950s.

636. And in this one scene,

637. there is a guy wrestling a giant squid.

638. And this kind of adds to the aura

639. of this idea of wrestling octopus.

640. A lot of these sort of rough and tumble,

641. rugged Pacific Northwest outdoorsmen realize,

642. "Wait a minute, this guy's wrestling an octopus?

643. I know where there's loads of octopi,

644. Puget Sound right here on our doorstep."

645. And it kind of really ignites

646. the competitive American instinct,

647. and starts a new type of animal wrestling.

648. These aren't your garden-variety octopuses,

649. these are giant Pacific octopuses

650. that get up to 20 feet long and weigh more than 100 pounds.

651. As octopus wrestling gains popularity,

652. a diver named Gary Keffler comes along.

653. And in 1963, he establishes

654. the World Octopus Wrestling Championships.

655. In April of 1963,

656. the first World Octopus Wrestling Championships

657. are held at Titlow Beach in Tacoma, Washington.

658. 111 divers show up, 5,000 spectators show up,

659. and at least two television networks show up

660. to do this one-of-a-kind event

661. that's held completely underwater.

662. The way the competition works

663. is these divers are diving down

664. and scouring the seabed looking for octopus dens.

665. So the wrestling starts

666. with the diver holding them up by the head

667. from the rock crevice,

668. then the octopus does, in fact, fight back.

669. They're in full-blown survival mode.

670. They could pull your breathing apparatus off,

671. they could wrap their tentacles around you.

672. Once you have it loosened, you put it into a headlock,

673. and you bring the octopus up to the surface.

674. The bigger the octopus,

675. the more points the diver receives.

676. Competitors get one point per pound

677. of octopus they bring to shore,

678. two points if they dive without oxygen tanks or masks.

679. So people train themselves

680. to hold their breath underwater,

681. and it's a skill.

682. It's really the depth that becomes more of a problem.

683. The pressure that's exerted on your body can be enormous.

684. You gotta applaud these people for having cojones.

685. You're wrestling these octopus,

686. you don't know how big they're gonna be,

687. do you know how many he can handle?

688. I don't know.

689. But as dramatic as this stunt may be,

690. all the excitement happens out of sight.

691. So the thing is,

692. all of the action is literally done under the water.

693. If all you see in wrestling is the guy pinned to the mat

694. and the other guy standing above him victorious,

695. where's the fun in that?

696. Eventually, interest in octopus wrestling fizzles out.

697. In the 1970s, Washington passes a law banning the sport,

698. but it wouldn't get a federal ban until 2010.

699. Deep sea wrestling turned out to be best suited

700. for the silver screen, instead of the small one.

701. In the 1980s, children had freedom

702. other generations never knew.

703. You could go where you wanted, you could do what you wanted,

704. and no one was around to say,

705. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

706. It's the late 80s,

707. most households have two working parents,

708. so kids are coming home after school bored,

709. no supervision, nothing really to do.

710. Latchkey kid is a term used to describe a kid

711. who would have a key around their neck

712. to let themselves get in when they got home from school,

713. because there was no adult to walk them home

714. or to be with them.

715. These latchkey kids were getting into all kinds of trouble.

716. They say the adolescent brain

717. is wired for adventure and discovery.

718. It is not wired for common sense and safety.

719. Kids were coming home to an empty house

720. and they were bored.

721. So a lot of these inner city kids,

722. they had access to elevators and they were just saying,

723. "Hey, why don't we ride these elevators?"

724. We're talking about elevator surfing,

725. well, that's what the kids call it.

726. Latchkey kids of the 1980s

727. would circumvent the elevator doors

728. a floor above the actual elevator itself,

729. and then they would find themselves on the top of it

730. riding up and down the elevator shaft.

731. Kids who are elevator surfing,

732. they're not doing it for the likes or the comments below,

733. they're doing it for the pure thrill of it,

734. what kids and teens have always done.

735. They don't look at elevator surfing as any more dangerous

736. than any other kind of playground activity.

737. I was on the FDNY,

738. I've been in some of those elevator shafts,

739. they are not safe.

740. There's a lot of points

741. where you could lose fingers and hands,

742. or just hit the ceiling.

743. Riding on the top is one thing,

744. but then these kids start to decide,

745. "Well, how can we up the ante on this?"

746. So they start coming up with names for specialized stunts.

747. One of them is called elevator action,

748. where they jump from one elevator top

749. to the other elevator top.

750. They come up with this thing called helicopter

751. where they're actually underneath the elevator

752. and they grab a hold of this two-inch electrical cable

753. that's attached to the bottom of the elevator,

754. and they hold onto that literally for their lives

755. as the elevator goes up and down.

756. This is stuff you see in action films that isn't even real.

757. People were falling off,

758. people were getting crushed, breaking bones.

759. Newspapers at the time,

760. they're reporting that kids as young as six years old

761. are taking part in the illicit activity.

762. The headline reads "Russian Roulette, but With Elevators."

763. 200 kids are arrested for doing it in 1989 alone,

764. and that same year, 40 kids are injured.

765. Elevator surfing is getting out of hand.

766. So the New York Housing Authority

767. decides to release this 19-minute PSA

768. about the dangers of it.

769. Man, adults love to trot out these PSA videos

770. where they show kids like, "Why you shouldn't do this,"

771. and "This is how little Timmy got hurt."

772. No kid has ever learned anything from a PSA.

773. Eventually, people realize

774. just asking kids not to do it is not gonna be enough,

775. they need to implement some safety measures.

776. So they make it

777. so you're no longer able to pry these elevator doors open.

778. Originally, that was a safety measure

779. for people who were stuck on the inside.

780. There are also these motion sensor beams

781. that will just automatically shut it down

782. if it senses anyone on top of the elevators,

783. and they're still there today

784. as sort of an anti-terrorist measure.

785. Makes you kind of miss the old days

786. when every elevator came with its own operator.

787. Usually when you call something a train wreck,

788. it means everything has gone wrong.

789. But there was a time when it meant

790. everything had gone right.

791. In the late 19th century,

792. if you're looking for entertainment,

793. your options are extremely limited.

794. This is before mass media.

795. There's no radio, there's no television,

796. so entertainment has to be in person.

797. And how are you going to attract paying customers?

798. You gotta have a spectacle.

799. A railroad in Ohio has a novel idea,

800. take a pair of old locomotives and ram 'em together

801. as a form of entertainment.

802. Two massive, pressurized steam engines

803. full of water, coal, fire, colliding.

804. Such a dumb idea that it is brilliant.

805. The stunt is a sensation,

806. which leads to imitation.

807. A passenger agent

808. for the Missouri-Kansas- Texas Railroad,

809. it's called the Katy, says to his bosses,

810. "Hey, we gotta do this too."

811. And his name is William George Crush,

812. I am not making that up.

813. Crush's bosses give him the go ahead.

814. And they begin by building a new town,

815. 14 miles north of Waco, Texas,

816. to stage their own crash.

817. It's September 15th, the day of the event,

818. and William Crush is hoping

819. to get 20,000 or so folks to show up.

820. They were hoping for a good crowd,

821. but they got a great crowd.

822. Almost 40,000 people arrive.

823. They arbitrarily decide

824. that they're gonna have the public stand 200 yards away.

825. Without any experience with this type of event,

826. and no way to calculate the safe distance,

827. the planners are basically just guessing.

828. They had sectioned off areas

829. where they didn't want them to be,

830. but you couldn't hold these people back.

831. People want a ringside seat,

832. the safe zone is out the window.

833. The crowds break the safe zone barrier,

834. and they crowd around the locale of the impending crash.

835. At this point,

836. two trains are hurtling down directly at one another.

837. Two gigantic missiles are hurtling towards one another.

838. As the trains approach one another,

839. the Dallas Morning News says,

840. "It sounds like the gathering force of a hurricane."

841. What happens next is beyond comprehension.

842. Massive collision.

843. And then the unthinkable happens.

844. Both boilers explode.

845. Families are running for their lives when it happens.

846. You go from this moment of elation,

847. "Oh my gosh, yes!"

848. to "Ah!

849. Run!"

850. Two people are killed by falling debris,

851. and at least six others are seriously injured.

852. There is a spectacular photograph

853. that captures the instant before the collision

854. taken by photographer J.C. Deane,

855. who unfortunately is blinded by flying debris.

856. When the smoke clears,

857. instead of fleeing the scene of destruction,

858. the crowd rushes toward it.

859. The crowd breaks their cordons,

860. and floods to the scene of the disaster

861. to collect souvenirs.

862. They wanted a token of this moment,

863. they wanted to take something home with them.

864. Trying to get pieces off the ground and from the trains,

865. some of these things are like boiling hot metal.

866. William Crush is blamed for the entire fiasco

867. and fired immediately,

868. but then there is no backlash.

869. Were there any repercussions for the Katy Railroad?

870. Not exactly.

871. Liability law wasn't really as stringent then

872. as it is today.

873. The Katy Railroad settles

874. with the families of those injured and killed

875. with some handsome cash payouts,

876. and, of course, lifetime rail passes on the Katy Railroad.

877. You would think, obviously, if people are getting hurt,

878. this would stop this from happening,

879. there's not gonna be any more of those.

880. Except, it's the opposite.

881. These spectacles have a hold on the American public

882. for decades.

883. Remembering the heyday of wild stunts,

884. whether it was jumping over 27 buses,

885. or setting off an explosion in centerfield,

886. or dancing on the wings of an airplane,

887. it was a time when our "Go big or go home" moments

888. could captivate the nation,

889. even if the risk wasn't always worth the reward.

890. But it's hard to deny that the insanity

891. is also what made our hazardous history so thrilling.