The rich, tragic history of daredevil Wallendas
Members of the Wallenda family practice on a 90-foot high wire at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey's winter headquarters in Sarasota, Fla., March 19, 1944. / AP Photo
(CBS/AP) NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. - Nik Wallenda will live out a childhood dream as he attempts to become the first ever person to cross directly over the Niagra Falls by tightrope. He'll also be adding another chapter to his family's storied daredevil history which dates back more than two centuries.
Wallenda, 33, said that this has been a dream of his since he was 6 years old on a visit to the Falls with his parents.
His walk above a nearly 200-foot drop has been heavily promoted and will be broadcast on national television. Wallenda has said he is disappointed he is being made to wear a tether by the event's sponsor, ABC, since his family has performed over the years without such safety precautions.
The cost of the stunt is estimated around $1.2 and $1.3 million and will air live on ABC Friday night.
Authorities are advising motorists to be ready for heavy cross-border and local traffic in western New York this weekend. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the Rainbow Bridge is also likely to see a large increase in pedestrian and vehicular traffic, especially after the walk Friday night.
The first family of funambulists
Here is a look at some of the Wallenda family's notable feats and tragedies:
- The Wallendas trace their fearless roots to 1780 Austria-Hungary, when ancestors traveled as a band of acrobats, aerialists, jugglers, animal trainers and trapeze artists.
- John Ringling of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus recruited the Wallendas after seeing them perform in Cuba. In 1928, the family gave its inaugural performance at Madison Square Garden earned a 15-minute standing ovation from an astounded audience, who marveled at them performing without a safety net.
- The signature performance of the group that came to be known in the 1940s as "The Flying Wallendas" was the seven-person chair pyramid: Two pairs of performers walk the wire, each supporting another aerialist on a pole. Those two aerialists, in turn, carry a pole upon which the seventh member of the troupe balances in a chair.
- The chair pyramid went terribly wrong in 1962 when a misstep at the State Fair Coliseum in Detroit sent two men to their deaths and paralyzed a third performer.
- In 1944, the Wallendas were performing at a Hartford, Conn., circus when a fire broke out. All the Wallendas slid down ropes to safety but 168 people died.
- The following year, Rietta Wallenda, sister-in-law of family patriarch Karl Wallenda, fell to her death in Omaha.
- Family patriarch and Nik's great-grandfather Karl Wallenda became a featured performer, doing "sky walks" between buildings and across stadiums including Busch, Veterans, JFK, Three Rivers and the Astrodome.
- Karl Wallenda successfully crossed Tallulah Gorge on a tightrope on July 18, 1970.
- In 1978, Karl Wallenda fell to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotel towers in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
- Angel Wallenda, who married into the family at age 17, performed with an artificial limb on the high-wire in 1990 after being stricken with cancer and having her right leg amputated below the knee. She died at age 28 in 1996.
- Since first stepping on a wire when he was 2, Nik Wallenda has earned six Guinness records, the latest in October 2008. That's when, 20 stories over the streets of Newark, N.J., he traveled the longest distance and the greatest height by bicycle on a wire, riding 150 feet.
- In 2011, Nik and his mother Delilah honored his late great-grandfather by walking Karl's last route at the same time, a feat that included Nik stepping over his mother in the middle of the wire.
- Fourteen family members perform today in various troupes.
Members of the Flying Wallendas tightrope-walking family perform the seven-person Great Pyramid at the Michigan State Fair Grounds in Detroit, March 6, 1998, at the Shrine Circus. Two members of the family were killed in the same arena while trying to perform the same act 36-years-ago.
/ ANDREW CUTRARO/AFP/Getty ImagesPopular on CBSNews.com
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"The only time that I'm alive is on the wire...
All the rest is just waiting"...
He died performing a daredevil wirewalk...but he was alive when he died