Daredevil Who Pioneered Bungee Jumping Has Peaceful Death

The Independent uses the word "maverick" to describe him, and a friend says he was an "anarchic buccaneer" who pioneered the extreme sport of bungee jumping and co-founded the Dangerous Sports Club. But David Kirke's death, as the newspaper puts it, was a "peaceful" one in his bed—which, a friend of the family tells the publication, would have come as a surprise to the 78-year-old. Kirke, who was the first person to ever bungee jump, on April Fool's Day in 1979, "would have been shocked that he died quietly in his own bed," the friend says. That jump was taken from the UK's Clifton Suspension Bridge, with Kirke donning a top hat, holding a bottle of champagne, and jumping without having first tested the rope. As itv noted in 2019 in a look back at the sport, the club originally spelled bungee "bungy."

Kirke was the very first to jump of the group of four—all of whom survived and were promptly arrested for the illegal stunt. A New Zealander was inspired by the group and went on to develop the sport, and Kirke never made any money from it. Kirke and the club went on to jump from other landmarks, plus perform stunts from using a grand piano or a dining room table to ski, to using a huge cluster of helium balloons to fly (across the entire English Channel, per the Guardian), to being shot from an aircraft launcher, to being the first to hang-glide off Mount Olympus. As for why they didn't test the rope before that fateful first bungee jump, Kirke once explained, "We were called the Dangerous Sports Club, and testing it first wouldn't have been particularly dangerous." (More obituary stories.)