National Post (National Edition)
ON THIS DAY
June 30, 1859 - Before some 25,000 onlookers, French acrobat Charles Blondin crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope. Ever the crowd-pleaser, Blondin stopped midway, sat on his wire and called for the tourist ship
Maid of the Mist to anchor beneath him, lowered a rope and pulled up a bottle of wine. Blondin repeated the performance an estimated 300 times with increasingly outrageous stunts, including carrying out a stove to cook an omelette in the middle of the wire.