14. Sam Patch, the Yankee Leaper, became legendary for jumping waterfalls
Sam Patch was born sometime around 1807, and was raised in the mill town of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where southern cotton was spun into fiber. As a child laborer he entertained his fellows by accepting dares to jump off ever increasing heights. The mill dam became a favorite launch point, into the water below. In his twenties, while working at another mill in New Jersey, he began to advertise his jumps and collect a fee from the fans who gathered to watch. He jumped from Passaic Falls in September 1827, a drop of seventy feet, to the delight of the crowd which paid to attend. The following year he jumped from Hoboken Falls, and when in New York he would leap into the water from the masts of ships. In 1829 he jumped from a platform erected for the purpose into the water beneath Niagara Falls.
The crowd which watched the Niagara Falls jump was depleted by inclement weather, and the by then famous Patch decided to schedule another jump, stressing that he had already successfully pulled off the stunt in his advertising. Before he did he jumped into the Genesee River at Rochester, New York. When that stunt too led to disappointing receipts he scheduled another, a week later, on Friday, November 13, 1829. He jumped from a platform 125 feet above the base of the falls, landed awkwardly, and his body was found early in the following spring frozen in an ice floe. Such was his fame that President Andrew Jackson named a favorite horse Sam Patch in his honor, and his name is still celebrated at the sites of his jumps today.