On This Day: Annie Taylor goes over Horseshoe Falls, 1901

On Oct. 24, 1901, Annie Edson Taylor, a 63-year-old American schoolteacher, became the first person known to survive a trip over Niagara’s Canadian Horseshoe Falls in a barrel, according to Guinness World Records.

The Horseshoe Falls, the largest of the three falls at Niagara and the one on the Ontario side of the border, drops about 51 metres, Guinness said. Taylor emerged “battered and bruised, but alive,” the record-keeper said.

It was her 63rd birthday, according to both Wikipedia’s biography of Taylor and a 2015 history feature from Radio Canada International.

Taylor had a custom barrel built of oak and iron, padded with a mattress, Wikipedia said. Radio Canada International said the lid was screwed down with her inside. Wikipedia said friends used a bicycle tire pump to compress the air inside and plugged the air hole with a cork.

Two days earlier, a cat was sent over the falls in the same barrel as a test. Both sources said the animal survived, with a gash on its head. Wikipedia said it was found about 17 minutes later.

On the afternoon of the attempt, a rowboat towed the barrel into the current from the American side and cut it loose, Radio Canada International said. Wikipedia said it was set adrift near the American shore, south of Goat Island, and carried by the Niagara River over the Canadian falls.

Radio Canada International said the barrel was seen bobbing at the lip of the Horseshoe Falls at 4:30 p.m. About a minute later it was spotted below the falls, and several minutes after that rescuers pulled it to shore. Wikipedia said the whole trip took less than 20 minutes.

The sources differ on her condition. Wikipedia said she had a small gash on her head. Radio Canada International described her as alive and unscathed when the barrel was opened, and shaken and slightly dazed in a photo caption. Wikipedia said fellow daredevil Carlisle Graham, the first man to run the Niagara rapids on a raft, helped her out.

Taylor later cautioned others against the feat. Wikipedia quotes her as saying that “if it was with my dying breath, I would caution anyone against attempting the feat.”

The fame did not bring lasting wealth. Both sources said she earned some money from speaking engagements, but her manager took off with the barrel and much of her savings went to detectives hired to find it. Wikipedia said the barrel turned up in Chicago and was stolen again.

She spent her later years posing for photos at a souvenir stand at Niagara Falls and trying other ventures, including clairvoyance and magnetic therapy, the sources said. She died in poverty in Lockport, N.Y., at 82. Wikipedia gives the date as April 29, 1921, while Radio Canada International says April 21. Public donations paid for her funeral, Wikipedia said, and she is buried in the “Stunter’s Rest” section of Oakwood Cemetery, next to Carlisle Graham.

Niagara has a long place in Canadian history. See our earlier On This Day account of Maj.-Gen. Isaac Brock’s death at Queenston Heights and our story on Richard Pierpoint’s Black unit, both set a short distance downriver.

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