Over a Barrel

stands out from all of them for a few specific reasons. First, it turns a lot of water, with over six million cubic feet going over the crest line every minute, and with it also goes sixty tons of minerals that are dissolved into a fine powder, giving the water it's unique green color. Though over eight million people visit the falls each year, it's much more than just a tourist site.

The Niagara River provides drinking water and hydro electricity to over a million people in both the United States and Canada. The falls draw many people to their majestic and breathtaking waters. These are folks who come to admire what the Earth has naturally created and what has endured for thousands of years. But Niagara also attracts attention seekers who want nothing more than to go down in history for dangerous and foolish stunts, and down is exactly where many end up, including one

Charles Stevens. Stevens was born in eighteen sixty two and he was from Bristol, England, where he worked as a barber to support his wife Annie and their eleven children. However, despite his steady employment and family obligations, the haircutter longed for fame and fortune. When he wasn't in his barbershop, the fifty eight year old Stevens could often be found leaping from tall points with a parachute on his back,

or high diving into a pool of water. His nickname the Demon Barber of Bristol, most likely due to his dare devilish nature and not because he liked to kill clients with straight razors or anything like that. Eventually, England felt like small potatoes for the kind of stunts that Stevens wanted to perform. He needed bigger, more exciting places with bigger, more exciting audiences, and so in nineteen twenty he packed his things and hopped across the pond to America,

where a new opportunity awaited him. You guessed it, Niagara Falls. His plan was simple. Stevens was going to travel down the Niagara River in a barrel until he reached the Horseshoe Falls, where he would go over the edge and emerge from below victorious. Of course, he wouldn't have been the first person to accomplish this. That honor belonged to Annie Taylor, who had performed her own version of the stunt two decades earlier. In nineteen eleven, Bobby Leech did

it in a metal barrel of his own design. This time, however, Stevens was going to do it his way. He would travel over the fall is in a modified Russian oak barrel. Bobby Leach tried to advise him, telling the would be daredevil that he shouldn't attempt the drop until his barrel design was just right. Stevens ignored him, however, believing Leech just didn't want him to have any of the spotlight.

Leech then reached out to another performer named William Hill Senior, who went by the nickname Red and had traversed the Niagara River in a steel barrel himself. Red knew the falls well, and encouraged Stevens to literally test the waters with an empty version of his Russian oak barrel to see how it would fare. The demon barber still wouldn't listen. Instead, at eight fifteen in the morning on July eleven of

nineteen twenty, Charles Stevens loaded himself into his barrel. It had been outfitted with arm straps so that he could brace himself inside. He also tied an anvil to his feet for better steering, and despite his protests, he agreed to take along with him a portable oxygen tank. Forty minutes later, after traveling down the river, the barrel went over the edge of the falls. Bobby Leach left just

before it did, choosing not to witness the inevitable. The barrel hit the water hard and sent the anvil, still tied to Steven's feet, straight to the bottom. The barrel had blown apart. A rescue team looked for any sign of the daredevil, but couldn't find him. Instead, they found one of his arm straps that had been affixed to the inside of the barrel. How did they know that it had belonged to Steven's because they also found his arm still attached to it, burying a tattoo that read

forget me not Annie. My guess is that she never did. It's probably safe to say that nobody who witnessed Charles Stevens go over the falls that day would have forgotten him either. Air travel has often been positioned as a way to get people from one place to another as quickly and as safe as possible. Of course, some people don't see it that way. For those brave souls, airplanes

are meant for endurance. Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh made waves for their transatlantic solo flights, and the current record holders for the longest endurance flight traveled around the world in nine days on a single tank of gas. But one airplane had them all beat. It was designed to spend as much time in the air as possible without ever having to land, a feat that was seen as a gamble, which was probably why one man decided to

try it in the first place. It started back in the late nineteen fifties, while Bob tim was working at the Hacienda Casino in Las Vegas. He repaired slot machines during a time when the Hacienda was fairly unpopular compared to other places on the Strip. It had positioned itself as a family friendly resorts amid a sea of mobster run hotels and casinos. The Hacienda lacked glitz, it lacked glamour,

and most of all, it lacked customers. There was a reason it had earned the nickname the a Seed Heaven. The owners, Judy and Doc Bailey, were often on the hunt for new ways to drum up business, and they were not particular about where those ideas came from. If anyone at the Hacienda, be at the cooks or the maids, came up with a decent plan, the Bailey's were always ready to hear it. Tim had been a pilot in the Army and brought an idea to Doc. What if

the Hacienda sponsored a record setting endurance flight. At the time, the record was held by two former Navy pilots who managed to stay in the air for forty six days in Tim thought that he could do better. Bailey was worried that the flight would be viewed unfavorably in the press, given that it was being done on behalf of a Las Vegas casino. Instead, he promised him that he would fund the whole project. Under the condition that any money

had generated go to a cancer fund instead. Bailey even came up with the way to let people get in on the action. Donors could mail their checks along with a guess as to how many days the plane could stay airborne. The person who guessed the closest would win ten thousand dollars and the hacienda would get some much needed attention. So Tim brought on a copilot and a mechanic and the three of them got to work modifying

Assessna one seventy two Skyhawk. The one seventy two came as a four seat, single engine plane, but it's paltry fuel tank only capable of carrying about forty seven gallons of fuel, needed some serious help. Tim affixed a ninety five gallon tank to the plane's belly, bringing the total capacity to one two gallons. The men also tweaked the engine system to allow for midair oil and filter changes

as necessary. They then removed much of the interior to reduce weight and install the platform on one side that allowed the copilot better access to the gas tank when refueling. In fact, the refueling process was the trickiest part of the whole plan. It had to be done while the plane was still in the air. Landing was out of the question, so the men rigged up a hook attached to a rope that they could lower to a gas

truck driving below. Someone would attach a hose to the hook, which was then winched up to the plane so that the co pilot could fill it. The hook was also used to bring up other things like food and a change of oil. The two pilots had basically built a

flying treehouse. Unfortunately, their first few attempts to stay in the air were met with turbulence, The engine suffered exhaust problems, the men got on each other's nerves, and constant mechanical issues meant the Cessna could only stay in the air for a handful of days at a time. Meanwhile, to other pilots, Jim Hef and Bill Burkhardt had made news by keeping their Cessna airborne for fifty days, breaking the

original record by four days. Tim and his crew made a few more modifications to the plane, and the co pilot was replaced with a man named John Wayne Cook, thirty three year old pilot and mechanic, not a bad combination to have on a long haul flight. One year had passed since Tim had started on the project. Finally, on December four, nineteen fifty eight, the Cessna took off from mccaren field, just across the way from the Hacienda. Meals for the pilots were made at the hotel each

day by the cooks there. The food had to be chopped into small pieces, though, and poured into thermoss before being sent up to the plane. When the men had to go to the bathroom, they relied on a portable travel toilets and plastic bags, which were then dropped over the Nevada Desert. The plane also featured a sink so men could shave and brush their teeth. They bathed outside the plane, standing on the refueling platform and washing themselves with the bottle of water. Tim and Cook didn't fly

across the country or even around the world. Their test was not of distance but of length, so they spent their time over Nevada close to home. By the time they finally landed on February seven of nineteen fifty nine, sixty four days later, they had clocked over one hundred fifty thousand miles, performed one d twenty eight mid air refuelings,

and broken the endurance record set months earlier. Today, the hus Cienda Resort and casino is long gone, but the plane that put it on the map is still around, on display at Harry Read International Airport in Nevada. It used to be called McCarron International Airport, and before that it was just known as McCarron Field, the same runway that launched two pilots in straight into the record books. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet

of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.