MIAMI (CBS4) – Why do people risk their lives with daredevil stunts?  Is it an attempt at immorality or just plain insanity?

I think all daredevils are looney-tunes.

The greatest magnet for these suicidal maniacs may be Niagara Falls.

For almost two hundred years, people have tried to survive a plunge of one hundred seventy feet, in all sorts of contraptions, over the most powerful waterfall in the world.

This week, Nik Wallenda, a seventh-generation member of the famed Flying Wallendas (arguably the craziest family ever), got the OK to walk an eighteen-hundred-foot tightrope across the falls.

In the nineteenth century, people did walk tightropes over a gorge there, but never across the falls themselves.

Wallenda’s attempt will be broadcast live on TV.

Records show fifteen people have gone in the water and over the falls… more than half died.

I visited the falls in the winter as a young boy and remember  nervously watching huge blocks of ice crashing over the falls just feet away.

I’ve never forgotten Niagara’s awesome power and can’t believe anyone is crazy enough to challenge one of nature’s greatest forces.