Bush Sr. Plans 85th-Birthday Skydive

(AP) - George H.W. Bush celebrated his 85th birthday by skydiving over the coast of Maine today. The 41st president made a tandem jump with a member of the Army's Golden Knights parachute team onto a landing zone near a church in Kennebunkport, where the family has a summer home. "I don't feel a day over 84," he told the Portland Press Herald. More»

Plunged almost 400 feet to their deaths

(NEWSER) - Two skydivers died in California yesterday after their chutes collided when the two were about 300 to 400 feet in the air, causing them to plummet, reports the AP . The men were pronounced dead on the scene after emergency workers failed to resuscitate them. Patrick McGowan, 42, was an instructor with almost 20 years experience. "He had over 17,000 jumps," said the regional director of the US Parachute Association, who added that McGowan and Christopher Stasky, also 42, were training parachute instructors for the Canadian military. More»

Jealous jumper Els Clottemans sabotaged victim's chutes

(NEWSER) - A Belgian woman involved in a skydiving love triangle has been found guilty of murdering her rival by sabotaging her parachute , and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Schoolteacher Els Clottemans, 26, disabled the victim's parachute because she was jealous of the woman's involvement with a Dutch skydiver, prosecutors said. The jury saw footage taken by the victim's helmet-mounted camera as she plunged to her death from 30,000 feet, the Independent reports. More»

Skydiver makes short work of it at 14,000 feet

(NEWSER) - A German skydiver solved a Rubik's cube while in freefall 14,000 feet above the ground, the Telegraph reports. Ludwig Fichte, 29, sat in a rubber boat with a companion while solving the puzzle and gloating to friends—all in the 31.5 seconds before he deployed his parachute. Check out the video of Fichte's feat, but note that it's the dinghy that lends his achievement historical significance: "Solving the cube in freefall has been done before," he said. "But I am the first to do it in a rubber boat." More»

Soldier says military training saved his life after instructor's mid-jump death

(NEWSER) - First-time skydiver Daniel Pharr had to think fast when he realized the instructor he was strapped to had suffered a medical emergency shortly after they leaped from the plane, he tells the Charlotte Observer. The soldier, copying moves he had seen on TV, pulled the toggles above him and steered the parachute safely to the ground. He then administered CPR but the instructor was already dead. More»