Speaker 1: You. I'm now listening to soft Core History.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome back to Softcore History. I'm your
host for the week Damage Ester, joined as always by Robert.
Speaker 1: Fox feeling Gas. Today, we had a.
Speaker 2: Long shoot yesterday. We have some bookstore sketches coming out
in the next couple of weeks, hoping to drop those
Monday Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Monday Wednesdays Tuesday for the Monday sketches on YouTube. Yeah,
but yeah, I'm proud.
Speaker 2: I'm excited. I was happy with what we did.
Speaker 1: Proud. Wow, that's not the way the day started. So
I'm glad that's the way the day ended.
Speaker 2: I was very flustered. It was very cramp space.
Speaker 1: It was really small, but good looking space.
Speaker 2: So stay tuned for those.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Today, though, we're actually talking about something fun and light.
Speaker 1: Okay, I love that, a little light history.
Speaker 2: And by that I mean we're gonna see a lunatic
tragically followed through with this plan.
Speaker 1: Oh god, he said this was all recorded, So what
horrible things are you gonna you're gonna show me today?
Speaker 2: Let's get into it. Okay. So the idea of yeating
yourself off something tall and landing safely dates back to
China in the fourth century BC, who experimented with umbrella
like devices to replicate a plumb blossom pedal gracefully floating
through the sky before touching softly onto the ground. There's
a legend of Emperor Shun escaping a burning building in
twenty two hundred BC using two wide bamboo hats to
glide down to safety like.
Speaker 1: A bird, like one on each arm.
Speaker 2: No, I think it's more like an umbrella. Okay, like
Mary Poppin's Oh he Mary Poppins it, but with two
just giant rice hats.
Speaker 1: That's sick. Oh. No, I know what we're doing. Oh fuck,
I think I already know this. The dude who tried
to make a flying vest or flying jacket and off
the Eiffel Tower.
Speaker 2: We'll get to that. Yeah, you nailed that. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know much about this guy, but I do know.
I just do know that that happened.
Speaker 2: Stepping all over my episode. I just, I just I
don't have this whole like preamble building up about parachutes
and kind of the history of people doing this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can I say something though, real quick for anyone who
listens to this show regularly, you know that I am
a vowed Leonardo da Vinci hater.
Speaker 2: We're gonna get to him.
Speaker 1: Just save your takes, okay, okay, save your takes for
when you're asked to hit them.
Speaker 2: I wanna set them up on a tee for you
to crush. All right, Wait your turn, damnit, I'm ready.
Speaker 1: I'm ready.
Speaker 2: There's an order to the show. Now. In the ninth
century Spain, some dude named Armin Furman attempted to fly
by jumping off a tower with a large cloak. Shockingly,
he didn't turn into a mashed human and survived the
attempt with non life threatening.
Speaker 1: In How big was the tower? I guess big enough
ninth century You probably looking at maybe ten stories, Max.
I feel like.
Speaker 2: Playing Assassin's Creed the Baghdad one. It's kind of land
because there are no top eldans. Yeah yeah, yeah, so
like the tallest things, like I don't know, like five
stories in Baghdad. So ninth century Spain is that moors?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, it's controlled mostly by the moors.
Speaker 2: So I'm not expecting, you know, them to build up
these giant monstrosities.
Speaker 1: They built, big towers, they built you know, I don't
know why bag Dad wasn't crushing it. But I feel
like the various Muslim cultures at that time built some
pretty decent towers for something, for whatever reason.
Speaker 2: Now, the earliest evidence of a true parachute design comes
to us thanks to Francisco de Giorgio Martini in a
manuscript from the fourteen seventies showing a free hanging man
clutching a crossbar frame attached to a canopy. Shortly after,
a more sophisticated parachute was sketched by your favorite boy,
Leonardo da Vinci in fourteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he sketched it. Sketch it, didn't invent it.
Speaker 2: Also, not the first to sketch it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeahs other people had this idea.
Speaker 2: Seems like he kind of ripped our boy Martini.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent. But you know what, if he
I'll give a little more respect. If he's just ed
Edison ng motherfuckers.
Speaker 2: That's how he's gonna earn your respect. You're gonna totally
flip on Da Vinci. What do you realized he stole everything?
Speaker 1: No? No, because he still didn't make it. Edison made it.
That's the difference produced it.
Speaker 2: It made a worse product.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he made it.
Speaker 2: The light bulb, wasn't the whole thing, Like, why would
you have it last forever? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, No one needs to be replaceable, right, No
one's gonna buy one the last forever. I mean, you're
not gonna make any money on it anyway.
Speaker 2: Now, the modern parachute was invented in the late eighteenth
century by Lewis Sebastian le Norman and France, who made
the first recorded public jump in seventeen eighty three. Now,
in seventeen eighty five, Jean Pierre Blanchard demonstrated it as
a safe way to bail from his hot air balloon.
Speaker 1: I's gonna say, at this point you have people high
enough in the sky, albeit infrequently that yeah, it's becomes
less of like, ay.
Speaker 2: What if it's mostly in France too?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well they were. This was kind of like peak France.
I feel like I feel like France from like the
eighteen sixties to I don't know, the twenties, we'll call
it the thirties to nineteen thirty. That's peak France.
Speaker 2: Okay, well this is seventeen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Oh seventh, I thought he's in eighteen eighty five, Oh,
seventeen eighty five now never.
Speaker 2: Mind big time for like hot air balloons. Oh yeah,
Wall Blanchard's first parachute demonstrations were conducted with a dog
as a passenger. He later had the opportunity to try
himself in seventeen ninety three when his hot air balloon
ruptured and he had to use it as a parachute
to escape with his life in an emergency.
Speaker 1: So motherfucker used a dog. Thankfully, I think the dog survived.
Sounds like the dog survived. Yeah, if he was like, Okay,
this works, I'll put it in the hot air balloon.
But uh, you know, we have a long human beings
of a long history of making dogs do our aviation
dirty work for us.
Speaker 2: First, how many dogs do we send the space.
Speaker 1: America? I don't know what I know. Russia killed that
dog or just left it up there?
Speaker 2: Did we send a monkey?
Speaker 1: We definitely sent a monkey, but we might have sent dogs.
Speaker 2: To How many animals did we send in the space
Just put out a.
Speaker 1: Guess, I bet like ten max google AI says hundreds
of animals, including dogs, monkeys, fruit flies.
Speaker 2: Well if that doesn't count, yeah, yeah, get out of here,
mice and even turtles.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't try.
Speaker 2: I don't I trust the turtle. But a turtle in
space is a hat on the hat?
Speaker 1: Why because the Earth.
Speaker 2: Are all flying through Yeah, on a turtle's back, turtles back.
Speaker 1: I will say though, like, but what does that mean?
Because I know they do take animals up to the
International Space Station. So I'm talking about like, uh, you
know ones, You're just shove in a pod and shoot
up there.
Speaker 2: I mean, we have an animal in our studio right now,
my dog. Yeah, as you can hear in the background,
I'm gonna have to send Chase to space.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Sorry, Jase getting in the pod.
Speaker 2: That's his final mission.
Speaker 1: I mean he if he has an intergalactic grave or
an interplanetary grave, that's pretty sweet.
Speaker 2: He gets to see the Earth one last time.
Speaker 1: Gets to see it, not know what it is really,
but no.
Speaker 2: I comprehend it. Yeah, it's the giant blue marble. Will
just gives be like, where's Dan? And that brings us
to today's topic about the man he mentioned earlier. He
tried to put his own stamp on the parachuteing lore.
His name was Franz riiekelt.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he was not was he German?
Speaker 2: I guess He was born in Austria, Okay, in eighteen
seventy eight to a family of hops farmers, oh and
stayed in the family business.
Speaker 1: Didn't what he was. He had bigger dreams than to
be a hopsman.
Speaker 2: Obtained his French citizenship in nineteen oh nine after he
moved to Paris at the age of nineteen a few
years before, and he adopted the first name Francois.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, he's integrating. You know what I mean, He's assimilating.
Doesn't want its filthy German Germanic name anymore.
Speaker 2: Franz, He's he's friends Will Falwill.
Speaker 1: He opened up a successful tailor in dressmaking business, but
a simple life of creating and altering suits and pants
was simply not enough. He dreamed of the stars.
Speaker 2: For Francois, don't call me Franz, no model. He decided
to use his skill set and what he thought was
a more useful manner. By nineteen ten, there was still
no parachute suitable for use in jumping from a plane
or at low altitude, so in July of that year,
Raikelt began to develop a parachute suit that could be
worn by a pilot with the addition of a few rods,
a silk canopy, and a small amount of rubber that
allowed it to fold and become what he hoped to
be a practical and efficient parachute.
Speaker 1: This was this thing was like not totally, but wasn't
it kind of just like a squirrel suit.
Speaker 2: It's the original squirrel suit.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so for from the the very conception of it,
you're just likely to die horribly even if it works.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, it could work too well. Yeah, going
too fast? It's not slow any down.
Speaker 1: I every time I get one of those videos of
my algorithm, I'm just like I can't encourage this, Like
I have to flip by it because like these assholes
are all gonna die.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What was the Red Bull of nineteen ten? Did
you get in some greeny sponsorship? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like Speed, just speed or yeah, I wouldn't be loudom
it was just some whatever the earliest version of Speed was.
I'm sure they had it. Maybe it's Cocaine Francois sponsored
by Cocaine. I mean we did the episode. I can't
remember if the patrio her main but on the on
the pope who appeared in a cocaine wine advertisement that's true.
The only pope I believe to ever be in any advertisement.
And he he, he wasn't sponsored by them, but he
loved the cocaine wine so much that he was like,
I will happily endorse it for you as the head
of the Catholic Church and God's messenger on earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, Also, we figured out who invented coca cola
on a previous episode we talked about on the Patreon
picture on dot com sauce softcore history when we were
talking about Grant Yea and him expelling the Jews from
Mississippi in Tennessee. The Confederate commander there, Pemperton. Yeah, he
actually was the inventor of coca cola.
Speaker 1: Oh shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so somebody told me that in the discord and
I just remember to stash in my back pop.
Speaker 1: Oh God, that's fucking funny. Yeah. I mean it's an
Atlanta company, so it makes sense.
Speaker 2: So back to our boy friends law. His early tests
were successful. Dummies equipped with foldable silk wings touched down
lightly when dropped from five floors, but converting the prototypes
into a wearable suit was a much more difficult task.
His original design used sixty five square feet of material
and weighed around one hundred and fifty pounds.
Speaker 1: So that's not a great start. Now, if you want
to land more lightly, I feel like.
Speaker 2: That's just adding an anchor to yourself.
Speaker 1: It literally is just adding shit to you. It's just
an acme and vill Yeah, that's just riding it down,
said parachute written on it.
Speaker 2: It's a looney too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, except you die, Yeah, you die, Yeah, you don't.
You don't like. Your whole body falls through the ground,
but your eyes stay above the hole and blink.
Speaker 2: You don't light a cigarette that explodes in your face
and it just erases your eyebrows. Right, your face blows
up as well.
Speaker 1: It's a stick of dynamite you thought was a cigarette.
Speaker 2: We tricked kids into eating cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Oh I loved candy cigarettes and cigars.
Speaker 2: I bet you did.
Speaker 1: Those were great. It was getting you ready, it was
that's just supporting American business, big tobacco. That was one
of the smartest things they ever did. I would always
be like, Dad, can I get a candy cigarette? And
he'd be like, Okay, I don't know whatever.
Speaker 2: Big league chew just getting your prepped and ready.
Speaker 1: Big League chew was my shit. That was that's that?
Shit was so good.
Speaker 2: We used to mix big league chew with actual chew,
with actual chew?
Speaker 1: Yeah, how was that?
Speaker 2: Oh great?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah better than real chew though. Yeah, true, you know,
add a little flavor chew. I can't couldn't do that
over chew and dip. Could never dip usually Redman, so Redman,
Big leagu chew. Mix it together, throw it in, yeah,
vomit immediately.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like it's just the samlot. Like you're just like.
Speaker 2: You gotta earn your wings.
Speaker 1: That's true. It's a right. It is a rite of passage.
Speaker 2: So he presented his design to the leading aeronautic organizations
at the aero Club de France, hoping that they would
test it, but they rejected his designs and told him
the surface of your device is too weak and you
will break your neck.
Speaker 1: But he wasn't ready to take no for an answer.
He was like, I'm a master tailor. What do you
fly boys know about the air and how things go
through it?
Speaker 2: I'm really good at sewing.
Speaker 1: Yeah all right, yeah, I'm a sewer. God damn it,
this is a sewer's business.
Speaker 2: I don't know. You get obsessed with something.
Speaker 1: But that's actually also a cheap shot, because a lot
of inventors and stuff in that time, like the fucking
Right Brothers their bicycle repairman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, actually you got to run a small time shop
to become an innovator.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, like they just were like, uh, they kind
of just figured it out. I think I don't remember
you did the episode, I believe, but yeah, like so
it makes sense that a lot that someone who like
a lot that happened a lot back then, that people
would like.
Speaker 2: See somebody that just tinkers. Yeah, yes, you want to tinker.
Speaker 1: A lot of tinkerers invented things that didn't.
Speaker 2: Really that's our problem nowadays. We don't tinker.
Speaker 1: No tinkers.
Speaker 2: Why we don't innovate because we don't.
Speaker 1: We don't need a tinker because I can just watch
slop on my phone all day. Yeah, I have nothing
to tinker with. You're tinkering with the algorithm. Yeah, that's
the only thing I tinker with.
Speaker 2: But it's only making the algorithm stronger and me weaker.
They attempted to dissuade him from spending further time on development,
but he was determined to prove the haters wrong and
continue to refine and test his design.
Speaker 1: Check it out. Sometimes your haters are right.
Speaker 2: Haters are often right haters.
Speaker 1: There's this weird uh, you know, like idea that haters
are batting zero.
Speaker 2: Haters are hitting haters at least eight hundred, Like they're
hitting much better than the people that prove the haters.
Speaker 1: Are two Ti cobs stacked on top of each other.
Speaker 2: All time Hall of Fame haters put them in. In
nineteen eleven, Roy Kelt personally jumped from the height of
thirty three feet at joint. The attempt failed, but a
pile of straw helped break his fall and he escaped injury. Okay,
literally assassin's creed jump into the hay.
Speaker 1: So and I assume he put the hay there right
like he had. He had to have done that. He
didn't just get lucky, I would hope.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Actually that'd be kind of sick if if he
did it was just a random bail of hay.
Speaker 1: I you know, it's the it's the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's bales of hay everywhere everywhere.
Speaker 2: He was not so lucky from his attempt from twenty
six feet though, and he broke his leg.
Speaker 1: Ugh, but he's not going to let that hater physics
keep him down.
Speaker 2: No, especially now when there's a prize on the line.
Speaker 1: What is the was there like a please someone invent
this parachute?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Colonel Lallance wrote to the aero Club de
France offering a prize of ten thousand francs for a
safety parachute for his pilots, because again, early stage airplane,
you're not getting up too high. No, and they crash
a lot.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Oh these people are just crashing constantly.
Speaker 2: You get into a dogfight, you know, you get a bail. Yeah,
really just kind.
Speaker 1: Of roll, honestly, Like the only way to bail is
to just like get it lower and lower until you
can jump out of the plane. Yeah. And that like
that was the thing. Like I don't even know how
much it was in World War One, but probably a
shit ton. But like even in World War Two, like
a lot of aviator desks where just like plane didn't work,
like planes stopped being a plane. That's the thing in
what is a Fuck? I always heard the name of
the Apple show.
Speaker 2: Well, we're spinning God's face at that point. Oh yeah,
they're not even real planes. What nineteen eleven planes?
Speaker 1: Oh? They're barely a plane. They're paper, they're yeah, like
kind of literally, they're like fucking canvas and wood with
a fucking engine.
Speaker 2: So the competition was open for three years and stipulated
that the parachute must weigh no more than fifty five pounds,
So he had to get it down from his original
one hundred and fifty pounds to fifty five pounds.
Speaker 1: You know, it's sometimes it's good to make an artist
work within a box, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It's often way more beneficial for the oughter is to
walk to work in that box.
Speaker 1: To give, to give. Limits are the key to creativity,
to be quite honest, because otherwise, if you just give
someone some shit, they're like, go do whatever you want.
They come back with the most self indulgent garb. One
hundred and eighty pound parachute is what they come back with. Now.
Speaker 2: Roy Kelt refined his design, reducing the weight while increasing
the surface area of the material until it reached one
hundred and thirty square feet. Dummy after dummy plummeted straight
to the earth.
Speaker 1: What a nightmare of a neighbor. Yes, there's just another
dummy getting yeeeded out of his window. Or off the roof,
like someone please stop giving France wat roof act.
Speaker 2: You think you have it bad because you're underneath a
guy above you that's just stomping around at late hours
of the night. Imagine if you lived under me right
now and I'm just constantly throwing things out of my window.
Speaker 1: Huge things like you just live in the neighborhood. You're walking.
You just bought a baguette and like six bottles of wine,
like that famous picture of that French chick, and then
a dummy just fucking falls out of the sky right
smashes all your wine. You're like, what the fuck? Like,
I gotta move, I.
Speaker 2: Got a big bag yet in your bag?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all wet and fucked up now it fell
in some horseshit Like you're just your day's ruined because
Francois thinks he can invent a squirrel suit.
Speaker 2: What do you think the Paris version of I'm walking his.
Speaker 1: Oh I wish I knew better French? Uh, just take
a drag of a cigarette, piece of sheet. Fuck you, yeah,
mailed mailed.
Speaker 2: Even though it seemed like the dummies weren't really giving
him the results he wanted, he still pushed on and
convinced himself that the problem lay not in his invention,
but how he tested it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the Uh, it's the principal skinner meme. Is
it me that's wrong? Like, is it me that's out
of touch? No? No, it's the children.
Speaker 2: The children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's all it is. He's like, is it
my invention that's bad? No, No, I'm there's something else
that must be wrong. He believed he needed to do
it from a greater height. Yes, you need to up
the stakes because it's not working enough. Hair he's not Yeah,
that's not catching enough from the apartment.
Speaker 2: You know, how can I tell if it takes like
a split second longer than it did last time?
Speaker 1: There's no way. There's no way up.
Speaker 2: The height is too short. Yeah, we must up the stakes.
So Roy Kelt announced to the press in early February
nineteen twelve that he received permission and would shortly conduct
an experiment from the Eiffel Tower to prove the value
of his invention.
Speaker 1: First off, I imagined him walking into a newspaper office
like Charles Guitau, you know what I mean, just walking
in and being like I am a great man. Come
cover my great come right stories of my great feats
that I will soon do. And I assume the newspaper
was like, God, this like the fucking eighth guy today.
All right, what are you doing jumping off the Eiffel Tower?
Because I have a suit that makes you fly. And
I don't think they were listening past jumping off the
Eiffel Tower. Yeah, because that's a good news story. Either wow,
that's great. Yeah, either it works, good news story or
it doesn't work, great news story.
Speaker 2: On Sunday, February fourth, at seven am, Riikelt arrived at
the tower by car with two friends. He was already
wearing his parachute suit. The weather was cold, with the
temperatures below freezing around like zero degrees celsius thirty two
degrees fahrenheit. Yeah. Yeah, And there was a stiff breeze
blown across the Champ de Mars.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's helpful, get a little extra air, and your
under here squirrel suit just blows you further to your death. Yeah,
I mean, one would hope, one would hope there's an updraft.
I know there wasn't, but one he could hope the.
Speaker 2: Suit did not restrict the wearer's movements. And he described
the method of deploying the parachute as being as simple
as extending your arms out to form a cross with
the body. So it's just this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in Christ's name, you fly not the worst strategy wide. Yeah, yeah,
that's what.
Speaker 2: You make yourself as wide as possible, because I you
crumple up, then you just sink.
Speaker 1: I do think someone can tell me this because I
assume we have a listener who was, because we was
a fair amount of military guys. Listen, who listen who
was like in the airborne or has jumped out of
a fucking plane before. But I do think that the
advice and not of really advice, but they're like your one,
like last ditch, Hail Mary, is you got to spread
yourself out as much as possible if shoot fails or whatever.
I think.
Speaker 2: And for the bushes, oh god, that's actually one of
the best opening scenes of a movie ever, just the
rock and Samuel L. Jackson, Oh yeah, the other guys
guys for the bushes arguably like the great Well Farah movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Some police officers were present to maintain order, as the
Parisian police captain had given Reikelt permission to do his experiment.
Believe in Reikelt would like a sane person be conducting
dummy drops, and he had no clue that he would
be making the jump himself.
Speaker 1: I'm actually shocked he got permission at all. So there
was a there was a guy speaking of monuments. I
think this happened when I was like really little, or
maybe right before I was born. But it was a
dude who was trying to His goal was to parachute
out of a plane, land on the top of the
Saint Louis Arch, and then I think slide down the arch. Anyway,
he just died.
Speaker 2: Didn't work. How far did he get though, that would.
Speaker 1: Have I'll have to look that up. But his goal
was partially like hit the arch and then I think
slide down. I think that's why it was. Yeah, that's
tight as hell. Yeah, well it would have been.
Speaker 2: It's like if you're going down into the subway and
all the people are kind of crowding the stairs, you
just fucking slide down the pole on your ass.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's sweet, And I think that's what he
uh wanted to do.
Speaker 2: But did he want to do it with like a skateboard? No?
Speaker 1: Oh god, I wish This would have been almost like
pre skateboard in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: There's no way it's pre skateboard.
Speaker 1: The arch is not that old, it's not pre skateboard,
but it's pre skateboard being popular. U Kenn Sawyer in
nineteen eighty attempting to parachute onto the Gateway arch and
then base jump, but his secondary shoot failed and he
fell to his death. When was that nineteen eighty eighty? Yeah,
Now there was another guy who did succeed. He suction
cupped all the way up to the top of the
arch from the bottom, pretending to be like Spider Man. Yeah,
and then he parachuted off and he succeeded. He went
to he got he went to jail, but he succeeded.
Speaker 2: Homeboy that died though. Did he even get to slide
down or.
Speaker 1: He landed on the top but his parachute failed to
deploy properly, So I think it was Oh, he didn't
try to slide down the North Lake. He just did
slide down there.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well you know he went out in style.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah like that. By the way, that is
a very popular tourist destination, so there were.
Speaker 2: There had to be at least a couple hundred people
on site watching this happen. This was a surprise to everybody,
including his friends that accompanied him to the Eiffel Tower,
as ry Kelt had concealed his intentions until the very
last moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's not a good it. Really should have
told him that, Like he couldn't tell them like I
should have in a revelation room. He couldn't tell them
because he knew they'd tried to talk him out of it.
Speaker 2: So dumb.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he was just like, my friends will turn
to haters if I tell them the truth.
Speaker 2: To keep the allies you have on your side, because
then you turn them into haters, that's just more people
they are gonna be, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he didn't want he didn't want them to
be haters until the very last second. I guess he
didn't dream big enough. What do you mean he only
went to the first floor. Oh yeah, yeah. He wasn't
like at the steeple or whatever.
Speaker 2: He was at the first like base of the Eiffel Tower,
which man not as cool visually, because I will show
you the video. Yeah, it goes exactly how you think.
It just an immediate like WP his friends tried to
persuade him to use dummies in the experiment once they
went up, assuring him that he would have other opportunities
to make the jump himself. When this failed, they pointed
to the strength of the wind and said he could
call off the test on safety grounds, or at least
delay it until the wind dropped. So like, you know,
you have an excuse. You don't look like a coward.
You're fine.
Speaker 1: You haven't out, dude.
Speaker 2: It's a cold, windy day. It's brutal. I honestly, my
friend asked me to attend him, and I look at
the weather report now, but sorry.
Speaker 1: Bud, I'm not gonna make it. Would cold wind if
he asked you to what go with him to jump
off the effel? Oh? Yeah, me alone?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: The cold, the cold, knowing he would die, it's fucking freezing.
Speaker 2: Knowing that he would die, I would still be like,
hey man, I'll be at the funeral.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll catch you the funeral. Dude, it's too fucking
cold today.
Speaker 2: I just can't do cold wind. Yeah, and God forbid,
there's rain.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The wind is what the wind is what gets you.
Speaker 2: He then told journalists from Lapitte Journeal that he was
totally convinced that his apparatus would work and work well, like.
Speaker 1: We know, we know you're convinced. That's not the problem.
Speaker 2: When question as to whether he planned to take any
additional precautions, such as using a safety rope, he replied
that he would not since he intended to trust his
life entirely to his parachute. In his own words, he
said in French, I want to try to experiment myself
without trickery, as I intend to prove the worth of
my invention.
Speaker 1: Again, as we said earlier, haters higher batting average than
you think, and betting on yourself not always a great idea.
Sometimes you're just a guy, and that includes us.
Speaker 2: Most times you're just a guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, most times you're just a guy.
Speaker 2: The world's full of jags. Now. Gustan Herveau, who was
also working on his own parachute suit, was present to
witness the demonstration. So a guy who's just as crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He attempted to dissuade Ray Kelt from making the jump,
believing that the parachute needed longer to fully open than
the few seconds from the drop of the first platform.
So he's like, dog, you gotta go higher.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like he's yeah, also that was how much higher
is this than his apartment? Because his whole fucking thing
was that his apartment wasn't high enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean he was making like thirty three foot.
Speaker 1: Drops, but I like you that even that still was
like the other parachute guy was like, that's not high enough, dude,
because those squirrel suit dudes who do it now, they
jump off of monstrous cliffs because they know they need
like every ounce of air they can get.
Speaker 2: The first platform of the Eiffel Tower is one hundred
and eighty seven feet high. Seems tall enough, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's what like fucking five times over six
times what he was doing. Fair enough to him, point
to Francois.
Speaker 2: But point the other way because a guy in your field, yeah,
very you know, it's a limited fraternity.
Speaker 1: It's a small, small house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like, man, you gotta you gotta go higher. Yeah,
that's not it's not gonna work for you. This is
not gonna go well. Yeah, I know he probably thought,
Doug just wants to see me drop out. He wants
the gloria, he wants the glory. Absolute hater right here,
he's the biggest hater. Yeah, he wants to steal my valor.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't let him. Nothing was stopping this man from
jumping off.
Speaker 2: There were many people that could have stopped him.
Speaker 1: I mean the cop could have literally been like nope,
well there was actually a guard too. Oh really, Why
weren't the police like, oh, oh, that's.
Speaker 2: What you wanted to do because they didn't know.
Speaker 1: Did they not go up there with them? No, they
were just there and they're like wait what They like,
just look up. They're like, whoa wait. Wait.
Speaker 2: So he shows up and he's in the suit, and
I think they were confused.
Speaker 1: I mean, but you could still, I guess, argue like, oh, well,
he's just showing what it looks like on a person. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't think he told, you know, cops on the
ground that he planned on jump.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, ropes had been suspended between the legs of the
tower by police at Rykelt's request to prevent the crowds
from spilling onto the landing zone, and he spent some
time discussing the arrangements with the marshals and ensuring that
there was a sufficient space for his land in before
going to the stairs to climb to the first platform,
and his first attempt to ascend to the first stage
of the tower was actually blocked by a guard named Gassan,
who had witnessed previous unsuccessful dummy drops and feared that
Rykelt's attempt would end in disaster. Yeah, He's like, please,
don't do it.
Speaker 1: It's just some blue collar high He's like, listen, buddy,
because I think as he's going up the steps, he's
telling his friends and the guard's.
Speaker 2: Like what yeah, no, no, go back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're gonna fucking die, dude. How does the guard
not have enough authority to get him the fuck out
of there?
Speaker 2: Can't stop a man that wants to die?
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 2: Despite the guard's resistance, by eight am, the matter had
been resolved again. Also too eight am. It's cold, windy day.
Just not showing up. Yeah, not showing up for my boy.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, early in the morning. Such a hard ass,
fucking freezing, Like you better fucking survive this, No shit,
this better be worth seeing. Roy Kelt was visibly shaken
by his argument with the guard. He was allowed to
mount the tower with his two friends and a cinematographer.
Sounds like the guard got through to him a little bit.
Speaker 2: He was in his own head a bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, not enough, not enough, but a little bit.
Speaker 2: Another was stationed near the foot of the tower to
record the jump from below. So we have footage from
the jump and we have the footage from the bottom.
Speaker 1: Oh good, perfect, you can intercut it.
Speaker 2: Also. Do you think these guys that kind of film
the documentaries like Free Solo, do you think they're like
cheering for the guy to fail? I think low key
or well it just kind of like Nix the film.
Speaker 1: I think probably not. But when they do fail, that
a lot of their grief is fake, like, oh, I'm
doing this in honor of him. It's like, na, dude,
you just got sick content from that guy.
Speaker 2: Fucking followed like if you're not that close the guy
just hired you. Yeah, it's like all right, yeah, I
hope you know the check cash.
Speaker 1: This is in honor of Chad. It's like, is it?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: There's a little part of me thinks these guys were
hoping it didn't work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, again, it's those friends. But like the two guys
that were holding the camera, it's like kind of sick.
If I could sell this.
Speaker 1: To the papers, dude, Well again, it goes either way.
It goes back to what I said when he walked
into the newspaper station, right, those newspaper guys are like,
great story either way. That's the documentary guy to say, way,
well be it. It'll either be a good story or
a great story.
Speaker 2: That's where I ket climbed the stairs. He paused, turned
back to the crowd, raised his hand and wished them
a cheery see you soon. His friends continued to try
to talk him out of the jump, but he remained undeterred.
At eight twenty two, am observed by a crowd of dozens.
Speaker 1: I mean it's in a park, dozens of us. Yeah,
it's in a park. I feel like people just walked
up and we're like, what's going on.
Speaker 2: Oh shit, It's like thirty journalists and a couple onlookers.
Roy Kelt readied himself facing towards the river on a
stool placed on a restaurant table next to the interior
guardrail of the tower's first deck.
Speaker 1: An extremely scientific setup.
Speaker 2: Yo, move that table from the restaurant over here so
I can kind of like get myself up.
Speaker 1: Basically what my kids do to get candy out of
the pantry. Just stack furniture on top of furniture until
they can reach it.
Speaker 2: Move that over. I gotta reset this. Yeah, a little
more than one hundred and eighty seven feet above the ground.
After adjusting his apparatus with the assistance of his friends
and checking the wind direction by throwing a piece of
paper taken from a small.
Speaker 1: Book, yep, so just did the little.
Speaker 2: Piece of grass into the air.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He placed one foot on the guardrail, hesitated for about
forty seconds, and leapt forward.
Speaker 1: There's some part of him that was like, this is crazy.
This is crazy, and then the other brave, spid part
of him was like, now is the time seize your destiny.
Speaker 2: His parachute, which had seemed to only half open, folded
around him almost immediately, and he fell for a few
seconds before striking the frozen soil at the foot of
the tower. Rykelt's right leg and arm were crushed immediately
on impact, his skull and spine broken, and he was
bleeding from his mouth, nose, and ears. His eyes were
wide open and dilated. He was dead by the time
onlookers rushed to the body, but he was taken to
the hospital where he was officially pronounced dead and autaps.
He concluded that reich Elt died of a heart attack.
Speaker 1: What did what did it conclude?
Speaker 2: Silver lining? I think he died in the air. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're at least given that to the papers, one hopes,
trying to paint any type of happy ending. Yeah, yeah,
like it's not as bad as he totally explodes. Yeah
yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh. Now do you want to see the video? Yeah,
of course, all right.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that thing is horrible. I forgot how
bad it was. Like, it looks insane, It doesn't look useful.
Oh and he he just I mean, he drops.
Speaker 2: The next day, newspapers were full of the story of
Riikel's tragic experiment, complete with photographs and I'll throughout the episode.
This is going to be a pretty media heavy episode.
Check it out on YouTube, yeah, software history YouTube, because
you're going to see how ridiculous this contraption is.
Speaker 1: It's the worst thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: The fact that his boys just let him even followed
through with any of the tests.
Speaker 1: They weren't good friends. They should have tackled him to
the ground.
Speaker 2: At least four newspapers showed images of the fatal jump.
Film of The attempt included footage of Reichkelt's body being
removed and the onlookers measuring the depth of crater left
by impact. Oh god, which was distributed by news organizations.
Speaker 1: What was the depth? It had to be like six
inches at least. It was at least I mean, and
that was hard ground. It wasn't like a soft summer ground.
Speaker 2: That's not how I want to die. No, that's not
where I bleed out. No, dude, I mean, that's worse
than Goslin and a blade runner stairs.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Reikelt's death was the first to result from a parachuting
accident since Charles Leroy died given a demonstration in Estonia
in eighteen eighty nine. On February two, nineteen twelve, two
days prior to Reichkelt's fatal jump, an American Frederick ar
Law actually successfully parish from the viewing platform of the
torch of the Statue of Liberty, which was two hundred
and twenty three feet. So he not only died at
the Eiffel Tower and in France, but he got cooked
like two days before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just didn't know.
Speaker 2: News didn't travel that hat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so some guy did it before him. So some
guy did it before him. He got beaten and just
didn't fucking know and went through.
Speaker 2: With died like an asshole.
Speaker 1: Now did the other guy have like a normal what
we would think of it as, like a normal parachute?
Speaker 2: Probably, I believe so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the good tongue wasn't squirrel suit, Yeah, the good kind.
This isn't even a squirrel It's like if it's like
if you combine like a squirrel suit with like some
sort of genie or Queen Amidala costume.
Speaker 2: It's like what stoo pickles would make for Tommy. Yeah,
and the kids, so they wouldn't like, you know, saram
wrap your child so they won't hurt themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this thing didn't look sturdy. It didn't look like
it had any idea how like physics or win or
air worked at all.
Speaker 2: No, Like he was just.
Speaker 1: Like, I think this is right, and I'm gonna sew
it up from scratch.
Speaker 2: After Riikel's death, authorities became wary of granting permission for
any further parachute experiments using the Eiffel Tower.
Speaker 1: Like like, oh, it's just wary. It's not like a
hard No.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a hard note they did allow people to
continue to experiment. You know, they did their due diligence beforehand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, checked a couple more boxes before they let him
jump off the Eiffel Tower.
Speaker 2: It's like, how many just squashed humans do we have
to peel off the ground underneath the Eiffel Tower.
Speaker 1: This is not only a public park, but the most
popular tourist destination in one of at the time, maybe
like the most yeah new wish. Yeah, no, it was
pretty fucking new at the.
Speaker 2: Time, honestly. Yeah, you go to France and you see
somebody just like plunge through their death in the Eiffel Tower,
you're probably I mean that is making the recap of
your trip. You're telling your friends about.
Speaker 1: Oh that's top three.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. It's like, oh, we went to you know that
famous cafe.
Speaker 2: We had really good wine in the south of France,
and yeah, we as we walked by the Eiffel Tower,
some lunatic just jumped in a squirrel suit to his death.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was weird. We watched. We were on our
way to get some morning coffee and that.
Speaker 2: Was like really good gelato there too. That gelato was insane,
It is so good.
Speaker 1: It was just the best. Yeah, yeah, I'd be like
I would be like, yeah that, and then I ate
one of those ham and butter sandwiches so good. The Parisian.
Speaker 2: I wonder why he ultimately did it though. It's not
like people were gonna remember him for this ultimately.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he would have gotten fame at the moment.
Speaker 2: I guess he just didn't think big picture enough.
Speaker 1: He was thinking too big picture. He was only thinking
of the end zone, not how to get there.
Speaker 2: Or he was one of the ten thousand francs. Also
that that wouldn't get that military sweet sweet contract.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. I can't imagine what that would be in
today's money, but probably pretty sturdy.
Speaker 2: I don't want to do the conversion.
Speaker 1: No, we don't need to do that. But yeah, I
think he was just really more concerned with being I
don't know famous is the right way to put it,
but like known, respected. You know, he could have just.
Speaker 2: Tailored suits and done a really solid job with a
respected business.
Speaker 1: Married a nice woman, had kids.
Speaker 2: I think he was unmarried. Yeah, yeah, this is definitely
the work of non married is a.
Speaker 1: Single man's project. Certainly no woman looks at it.
Speaker 2: Some of the right brothers, they weren't married. Yeah, something
about the sky and women don't mix. No, Melia Airehart
perfect example.
Speaker 1: Yeah. See that is the thing is like having a
good woman for the most part, will keep you alive,
but every once in a while it will diminish your greatness.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, but like for.
Speaker 1: Nine out of ten guys, it'll keep you alive.
Speaker 2: Because a woman's not gonna let you get up onto
that platform. No, No, like, think about our family, think
about our children, yeah, think about me.
Speaker 1: And he's just like, yeah, you can't. You can say
that to yourself and to your friends who like, you know,
like you, but not they don't care about you that much.
And you know, be like the sky calls to me
and you'll get away with it. But your wife, you
can't say that to your wife.
Speaker 2: Even though dude in Free Solo, I remember he was
blaming his girlfriend at the time. He's like, man, I'm
injuring myself more since she got involved in the picture.
I think it's on her.
Speaker 1: He's just not concentrating, that's what it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just like, my my sole focus needs to
be here.
Speaker 1: Makes it he died actually because of her?
Speaker 2: No, he's still a lot.
Speaker 1: That's the Free Solo guy died.
Speaker 2: Free Solo is still around, Okay, I still care who
died somebody, somebody one of those I think like his
boy in it. I think one of the guys that
made in the parents in Okay the documentary dies because
of course they are going to that their ultimate end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think. I I think I saw a story
that was like, for I just like the New York
Post will do this. You know, they'll say, like Star
of X dies and it'll be like like like for example,
like it'll be like Seinfeld star dies and it's obviously
not one of the four. It's like some person who
appeared in three episodes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but also the guy could have just died too.
I didn't hear about it that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, like he could die tomorrow. Yeah, you do
that every Day's it's just what happened. Those the odds
of it happening are just you know, immense astronomical. You're
good to die, You're just like I mean, it's like
just being like a professional rough Russian roulette player. Yeah,
like you're it's just like.
Speaker 1: Oh, dude, another pro Russian roulette player died, like well,
that's the name of the game pretty much. But yeah,
I think he really. You know, back in that time,
that was one of those like very in not just
in America, but in that in Western Europe too, like
a very just like exciting, hopeful time, like sciences here
and there's all these new things and industry and flying
and you just they're just like the atmosphere itself convinces
you that you can do fucking anything. But again, you're
probably just a guy, and you probably can't.
Speaker 2: That's the lesson we learned today. You're probably just a guy,
So get married. Don't go to the sky.
Speaker 1: This guy is not calling to you. You're hearing voices
God's sky. Yeah, we weren't meant to be there, we
were not. I mean, look, I'll use an airplane, don't
get me wrong, but that's as far as I'll go.
I'll never fly one. I won't spit in God's face
that way.
Speaker 2: You don't want to roy holiday the situation.
Speaker 1: No, Wow, it's usually me that brings that up.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, well I was just trying to get
ahead of it. Yeah, I knew it was coming.
Speaker 1: Wasn't even on my mind, actually it was.
Speaker 2: It's always on your mind. You think about roy Holiday
crashing his little plane into the sea every twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: I believe that it comes in a lot for sure.
We're like, man, he threw a no hitter in the playoffs,
first playoff game, and he still needed more.
Speaker 2: Just wasn't enough juice. Yeah, not an adrenaline junkie guy.
Never happened.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Actually, when I was a kid and we were riding
like dirt bikes and ATVs and stuff, I'd always go
like a normal speed. Yeah. I was never popping wheelies.
Speaker 1: Never doing crazy jumps or anything like that. No, I
was terrified. It's yeah, dude, there was a fucking I'll
never be a motorcycle boy right down the street. Don't
need to worry about that with my midlife crisis. Yeah,
right right down of the street by the restaurants and
grocery store stuff. I was going to the liquor store,
I think, the other day, and I pulled into the
parking lot and there's just a literal motorcycle gang of teens.
Speaker 2: Teen motorcycle gang.
Speaker 1: Teen motorcycle gang on their dirt bikes, just like ten
of them.
Speaker 2: Oh. I saw at the seven eleven the other day.
There was a couple, uh like Fast and Furious crew.
Speaker 1: Oh sick.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There was even like an Asian chick that was
like drifting, just very totally.
Speaker 1: Someone's whipping shitties at seven eleven.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with like the neon lights underneath.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I got actually dealt with that. Driving to Gabby's
house the other day its location scout for the sketches,
I was on two and just we're like fucking four
of them right past me at like at nine o'clock
at night.
Speaker 2: I was just like, what.
Speaker 1: The fuck, dude, what the fuck? And there were shitty cars.
Speaker 2: Too, yeah. Yeah, it's usually just a souped up camera. Yeah,
I mean, dom most reliable car in America, but dog
shit cars don't put a spoiler on it.
Speaker 1: I was like, God, damn it, dude. This is why
I don't go out anymore. This is why I'm just home.
Speaker 2: This today's hitler.
Speaker 1: This guy no his friends.
Speaker 2: His friend's just not doing enough.
Speaker 1: They didn't do nearly enough. If they liked him at all,
you just rip him down, Yeah, you hold him down.
Speaker 2: I think today's hitler are the dogs that are underneath me,
that bark at everything, that moved every fucking thing.
Speaker 1: I talked to the lady who wanted them, and she
was like, I guess they're just doing their ches and
clean up the shit. It's crazy and it smells so bad.
They're huge, huge dogs. It is like a fat man's shit.
Speaker 2: It's more shit than yard. Yes, yeah, just massive dumps.
That's my hitler today. Okay, those dogs that owner, yeah,
just leaving. I mean she has kids too, Like make
the kids pick up the ship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like that's what they're there for, hey, gutside, pick
up the ship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, train your dogs better, guys, train your children. Better
train your children. Better train your children by training your dogs. Yeah,
train the same way.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, this guy's fucking friends really just we're like,
I don't know what to do. Maybe they didn't know
him that well, you know what I mean, Like there
was buddy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, are they friends or acquaintances?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like he's just like met them. He's like, you
want to come and check this out? And like an
acquaintance will be like, I don't know, Brian, you know,
like I don't know, friendzois fucking see you like a
bad idea, but I don't know you do you dude?
And that is the story A Franz friendcois yep, right out.
Speaker 2: Thank you for tuning in. We love you guys, thanks
for joining. Make sure to check us out on patre
on patreon dot com, slash softwore History where you get
too additional episodes every Wednesday and Friday for the normal
software history feed. We also have a sports show for
the upper tier, and I give out a weekly column
for golf, so uh check that out. I'm not sure
if this is gonna hit this week, but we're getting
eh now, so can like another solo? Second? Oh, that's brutal.
We're getting calls though, first first term of the season.
That's a good it's good start. It's a good start. Yeah,
we're around the hole. It's like you can ask for.
But check out the YouTube. Check out uh Spotify, Apple,
leave a review please and thank you five stars.
Speaker 1: And give us a follow on on Instagram as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh, stay tuned for those sketches. Those should all
be coming out soon. Yep, So Rob Fox, I'm damageester.
You just got saw served.