We love the old days when acrobats and circus performers had prefixes like ‘The Great’ and ‘The Amazing’ in front of their surnames. Truly, it was a golden age (sic transit gloria mundi).

One such artiste was the tightrope walker, Charles Blondin (his real name was Jean Francois Gravelet-Blondin), who was known as ‘the Great Blondin’.

We were thinking about Blondin just the other day when reading newspaper stories about ‘aerialist’, Nik Wallenda, who tightrope-walked across Niagara last week.

‘The Great Blondin’ also walked across Niagara Falls on a tightrope, back on 30 June 1859.

We’ve been reading stories in the Archive about Blondin’s amazing feat. Indeed, the first few news reports in the UK said that it was a hoax. It was not until eye-witness accounts flooded in that the newspapers of the day confirmed Blondin’s rope-dancing achievement.

We also love the phrase, ‘rope-dancing’! We think it should be an Olympic event – or one of the routines in ‘Strictly Come Dancing’…

Salisbury and Winchester Journal – Saturday 17 September 1859

Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000361/18590917/002/0002