On October 24, 1901, her sixty-third birthday, schoolteacher Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Hoping the publicity would bring financial security, she entrusted her life to a custom-made wooden vessel and the turbulent waters above Horseshoe Falls.
Her barrel was built from oak, reinforced with iron hoops, and padded with a mattress. A harness helped secure her inside, and she brought along a lucky heart-shaped pillow. After assistants screwed down the lid, they used a bicycle pump to compress the air inside and sealed the opening with a cork. Then they set her adrift.
The current carried the barrel toward Horseshoe Falls and over the brink. Taylor survived the plunge, but rescuers still had to retrieve the barrel and get her out. When they finally opened it, she emerged shaken and with a cut to her head, but without major injuries.
The feat made Taylor famous, but it did not deliver the lasting wealth she had hoped for. Her manager disappeared with the barrel, and she spent much of her savings trying to recover it. She later sold her memoir at Niagara Falls—a woman whose extraordinary survival had earned her a place in history, but not the financial security she had risked her life to obtain.
