Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian extreme sports athlete famous for his record-breaking skydive from the edge of space, has died at the age of 56. Local police in central Italy confirmed he was killed in a paragliding accident on Thursday.
Baumgartner reportedly lost control of his motorized paraglider and fell down close to a hotel in Porto Sant’Elpidio. The cause of the incident is still to be determined; however, the mayor in the town suggested that he may have suffered a problem medically, while in the air.
In 2012, Baumgartner stunned the world with a historic jump from a balloon 24 miles high and the first person to break the sound barrier in freefall in a jump that reached a speed of 833 mph, over Roswell, New Mexico. His career includes many extreme jumps, including BASE jumps from the Petronas Towers and skydived the English Channel.
