Nik Wallenda and The Flying Wallendas

Nikolas Wallenda -- King of the High Wire -- was born in Sarasota, Florida, in 1979. He is a seventh generation member of The Flying Wallendas, the famous, fearless circus family best known for performing their heart-stopping aerial daredevil feats without a safety net.

The Flying Wallendas, 1967
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Nik Wallenda is the great-grandson of Karl Wallenda, who was born in 1905 to an old German circus family. Karl began performing at the age of 6 and started his own troupe in 1922.

"The Great Wallendas" were spotted by John Ringling while performing in Cuba and hired on for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, making their US debut at Madison Square Garden in 1928.

Karl Wallenda died on March 22, 1978 - at the age of 73 - when he fell from the high wire at a performance in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

On October 15, 2008, Nik broke the world record for the highest and longest bike ride on a high wire live on NBC's Today Show; he and other branches of the Flying Wallendas family hold a number of records in the Guinness Book of World Records.

On June 4, 2011, Nik Wallenda, with his mother Delilah, completed the walk that killed his great-grandfather - as did Rick Wallenda, Karl's grandson, in 1979. You can't keep a Flying Wallenda on the ground!

Nik Wallenda's wife, Erendira, comes from the Flying Vasquez trapeze artist family. Not surprisingly, Nik proposed to his future wife (on bended knee!) on a highwire 30 feet above the heads of a crowd of 80,000 people at a performance in Montreal, in 1999. Nik and Erendira's two sons, Yanni and Amadaos, and their daughter Evita, are following in their parents'high-wire footsteps.

Next up - Nik Wallenda's long-awaited high-wire walk across Niagara Falls.

Funambulist is the proper name for a tight-rope walker. Here is a list of the funambulist daredevils who have challenged the Niagara Falls crossing:

• 1859 and 1860 Jean Francois Gravelot aka "The Great Blondin"


• 1860 William Leonard Hunt aka "The Great Farini"


• 1865 Harry Leslie aka "The American Blondin"


• 1869 J.F. "Professor" Jenkins


• 1873 Signor Balleni


• 1873 and 1874 Stephen Peer


• 1876 Maria Spelterina (or Maria Spelterini) -- the only woman to cross Niagara Falls on a high-wire, she accomplished the feat 4 times in July 1876 -- once in the conventional manner, once with a peach basket strapped on each foot, once blindfolded, and a fourth time with her wrists and ankles in manacles!


• 1887 Stephen Peer, yet again -- he made the Niagara crossing successfully, but died three days later in a senseless drinking-and-tight-rope-walking accident.


• 1890 and 1891 Samuel Dixon


• 1892 and 1893 Clifford Caverley


• 1896 James Hardy


• 1897 D.H. McDonald


• 1911 Oscar Williams


• 1975 Henri Julien Rechatin

A fifty-year ban on daredevil stunts at Niagara Falls was reconsidered in February 2012, and Nik Wallenda was granted permission to attempt the controversial tightrope walk across the Niagara Gorge. Further, it was decided that new applications for Falls stunts will be considered once in every 20 years, from this point onward... What was Nik Wallenda's response? Good enough, he said. In another 20 years, his own son would be about ready to take on Niagara Falls.