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Felix Baumgartner devoted his life to routinely taking the kind of risks that most sane people would never even consider subjecting themselves to. Sadly, his wild ride through life recently came to an end after he passed away following a paraglider crash in Italy.
You need to be a special kind of person to pursue a line of work that allows you to list “Professional Daredevil” on your résumé, and Felix Baumgartner earned the right to do exactly that during a career where he routinely put his life on the line by attempting risky stunts that tended to revolve around his parachuting prowess.
The Austrian initially honed his skydiving skills as a member of the military in his native country and used that training to pull off a string of attention-seeking stunts, including a risky BASE jump from the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio De Janeiro and a wing-assisted skydive across the English Channel.
However, he truly outdid himself in 2012 when he traveled 24 miles above the surface of the Earth in a helium balloon before leaping off of it to begin a freefall that lasted for more than four minutes and resulted in him breaking the sound barrier before touching back down safely in New Mexico.
He may have Officially Peaked at that point, but he continued to go out of his way to get his adrenaline fix before things took an unfortunate turn on Thursday.
Felix Baumgartner passed away in a paraglider crash in Italy that left a bystander injured
According to La Repubblica, the 56-year-old Baumgartner wasn’t taking it too easy while vacationing with his family in Fermo, Italy, as he posted a picture of himself aboard a paraglider above the coast of the Adriatic Sea last weekend.
He took back to the skies on July 17th, but things went south when the paraglider crashed in the immediate vicinity of a swimming pool at a hotel in Porto Sant’Elpidio.
According to eyewitness accounts, Baumgartner “immediately lost consciousness and went into cardiac arrest,” and first responders were unable to revive him on the scene (the outlet notes he may have suffered a medical incident while in the air that contributed to the crash).
A woman working at the pool was also injured after being struck, but she’s expected to make a full recovery.