Man On Wire

Don't miss your chance to see the multi-award winning film Man on Wire tonight at 9pm on Discovery UK.

This documentary charts the incredible story of Phillipe Petit, and how he achieved the impossible when he walked across a high wire 1,350 feet above the hard concrete streets of New York.

On August 7th 1974, a young Frenchman named Phillipe Petit stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between New York’s twin towers, then the world’s tallest buildings.

He’d spent six and a half years dreaming of this incredible feat,
including eight months in New York, meticulously planning the execution of this ultimate high-wire walk.

Aided by a team of friends and accomplices, Petit faced an extraordinary set of challenges: How to bypass the World Trade Center’s security with a heavy steel cable; how to get the wire from building to building and anchor it; and how to tension it to withstand the high winds and swaying of the buildings. To cap it off, all of this had to be done at night.

At an unnerving height of 400m above the Earth, or 110 storeys high, Petit proceeded to spend around 45 minutes walking, running, dancing, hopping and even lying down on the wire, which was less than an inch/2.5cm across.

At 7.15am Phillipe, 1,350 feet above the city, took his first step toward infamy, to create “the artistic crime of the century.”



Did you know...?

• The 24-year-old Petit crossed eight times between the towers
• He taught himself to be an aerialist by walking across a rope strung between two trees in a park by the Seine.
• In 1986, in a gesture to promote peace between Israel and the Palestine, he walked a wire from a church in west Jerusalem and across a valley to the wall of Jerusalem's Old City.

Related links:
- Visit the Extreme Engineering site
- Watch clips from the Extreme Engineering show
- See the How Do They Do It video playlist

Comments

[wire clips]

This is really danger trick but i really like it thank you for sharing this onformation