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one sad day - Evel Knievel died at 69

Daredevil Lenged Evel Knievel

- nov 30 2007

 

Evel Knievel Dies at 69

 

copy from THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 4:17 p.m. ET

 

CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) -- Evel Knievel, the hard-living motorcycle daredevil whose exploits made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.

 

Knievel's death was confirmed by his granddaughter, Krysten Knievel. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs.

 

Knievel had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, likely contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bone-shattering spills.

 

Name at birth: Robert Craig Knievel

 

Evel Knievel brought the spirit of P.T. Barnum to daredevil motorcycle jumps in the 1970s. Dressed in his signature red, white and blue jumpsuit, Knievel would race his motorcycle up steep ramps and over obstacles like the fountains in front of Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas (in 1968) or a row of 13 double-decker buses at London's Wembley Stadium (in 1975). Often he crash-landed, thrilling viewers while breaking dozens of bones. His most famous stunt was an attempted jump over Idaho's Snake River Canyon in a rocket-powered "motorcycle" in 1974. The attempt failed when the craft's parachute opened prematurely, but Knievel survived. He retired in 1981; his son Robbie Knievel succeeded him as the family motorcycle daredevil. Evel Knievel received a liver transplant in 1999, due to hepatitis C presumably contracted through blood transfusions after his many crashes.

 

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Uploaded on November 30, 2007
Taken on November 30, 2007