22 Amazing, Hair-Raising Vintage Photos Of Stunts

Feast your eyes on these daring feats! Fire-eating, death-defying leaps, high-wire acts, and more.

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Yasmin Trevanna gives a preview of her fire-eating act at the Magic Circle headquarters in London on Oct. 9, 1961.

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Eddie Kidd, English stunt motorcyclist, leaps an 80-foot broken span of a railway bridge for the film Heavy Metal in Essex, England, 1979.

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Waterskiing at Cypress Gardens in Florida, circa 1955.

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Stunt driver Keith "T-Bone" Bowen jumps 13 parked cars and breaks the world record at Thruxton Racecourse in England on Nov. 14, 1975.

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Gene Mendez, a high-wire performer, walks across a cable suspended over a bear pen, circa 1972.

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Circus strongman Stefan demonstrates his strength by towing a motorcar with his teeth in Berlin, circa 1925.

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A fakir performs the bed of nails trick, circa 1955.

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Sergeant Major Tom Gledhill leaps over 20 members of the Royal Artillery Motor Bike display team at 45 mph, 1966.

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Joe Smith, a blacksmith strongman from Gloucester, balances a roadworks notice with his teeth on March 28, 1936.

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Acrobatic dancers rehearse one of their stunts on the roof of a building near Trafalgar Square, 1938.

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Soldiers from the Scots Greys practice trick riding at Redford Barracks, Edinburgh, on May 18, 1935.

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Aerial acrobat Schindler practicing one of his tricks from a Klemp plane piloted by Richard Perlia, circa 1927.

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A Cossack man performing a daring trick as he rides a horse, December 1925.

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A rider on horseback performs a stunt high-dive into a swimming pool, circa 1940.

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Magician and teacher Lee Roy Neal plunges a burning torch into his mouth when the wind currents are just right, circa 1948.

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A stuntman balancing on a handrail at the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, circa 1935.

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Escapologist Timothy Dill-Russell, in a straitjacket as he hangs upside down over the Thames River before his attempt at escape on Dec. 18, 1966.

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Unicyclists performing, circa 1950.

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German juggler Dieter Tasso balances seven cups with saucers on his head while walking on a tightrope at the Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus, circa 1953.

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An acrobat rehearses with a flying leap over a child in a stroller in England on March 13, 1950.

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French daredevil Jean Francois Gravelot, aka "The Great Blondin," tightrope-walks across the Niagara River Gorge carrying his manager, Harry Colcord, on his back on Aug. 19, 1859.

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Stunt motorcyclist Bill Deegan drives his motorcycle through a wall of blazing straw at Paddock Wood fete in Kent, England, on July 27, 1964.