WATCH: 1926 world first motorcycle parachute jump goes horribly wrong
The first of many crazy moto parachute jumps didn't exactly go to plan...
IT TAKES a certain kind of person to strap a parachute to their back, climb aboard a motorcycle and ride at full pelt off a cliff.
To do so almost 100 years ago is next level crazy. And as this video shows, also a terrible idea.
Filmed in 1926, the British Pathe film shows Fred Osborne attempting the first ever motorcycle parachute jump off the 500ft Huntington Cliff in Los Angeles, aboard a Henderson 4-cylinder motorcycle.
Without a helmet and wearing nothing but a jersey - with the slogan 'Just Freddie' scrawled across the back - jeans and long leather boots, the daredevil offers a nonchalent glanceto the camera before accelerating to around 60mph and hitting the tiny take-off ramp.
Unfortunately, someone had done their maths wrong and his speed and the height of the cliff weren't enough to allow for a full parachute deployment. Instead, Osborne and the motorcycle plummeted to the ground below, where the two wheeler burst into flames.
Incredibly, the young man survived, something the April 27, 1927 edition of Popular Science Monthly attributed to the telphone wires that supposedly broke his fall. He was rushed to hospital and expected to make a full recovery.
This is how it was reported in the Evening Independant on November 18, 1926...
Of course, many have since undertaken similar feats, with varying degrees of success. For example, here, when the rider landed it but the bike didn't fare so well...
But this has to be the best example, with both bike and rider coming to a super soft landing...
It only took 92 years to get it right!
