New Delhi: You surely must have heard of this man. Yes, we're talking about 'Bear Grylls', that crazy dude from the television series 'Man vs Wild' (2006) who's encountered a number of near-death experiences in his life, yet survived miraculously.
As the British adventurer, writer and TV presenter turned 42 on June 7, 2016 Tuesday, let us take a quick glance at some of his unbelieveable stunt and achievements that have left us bewildered:
Parachute accident
In 1996, Grylls (born Edward Michael Grylls) suffered a freefall parachuting accident in Zambia afer his parachute ripped at 16,000 ft during a skydive, partially breaking three vertebrae. He spent the next 12 months in and out of military rehabilitation at Headley Court.
He later said, "I should have cut the main parachute and gone to the reserve but thought there was time to resolve the problem".
Climbing Everest
18 months after he broke his three vertebrae in a parachuting accident, on 16 May 1998, Grylls achieved his childhood dream of climbing to the summit of Mount Everest in Nepal. At 23, he was at the time among the youngest people to have achieved this feat.
Circumnavigation of the UK
In 2000, Grylls led the team to circumnavigate the British Isles on jet skis, taking about 30 days, to raise money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). In a strange gesture, but for a noble cause, Grylls also rowed naked in a homemade bathtub along the Thames to raise funds for a friend who lost his legs in a climbing accident.
Dinner party at altitude
In 2005, Grylls created a world record for the highest open-air formal dinner party alongside the balloonist and mountaineer David Hempleman-Adams and Lieutenant Commander Alan Veal, leader of the Royal Navy Freefall Parachute Display Team. Dressed in full mess dress and oxygen masks, they held the dinner party under a hot-air balloon at 7,600 metres (25,000 ft). It is said that to train for the event, Grylls made over 200 parachute jumps.
Longest indoor freefall
In 2008, Grylls, along with the double amputee Al Hodgson and the Scotsman Freddy MacDonald, set a Guinness world record for the longest continuous indoor freefall. Grylls, Hodgson, and MacDonald, using a vertical wind tunnel in Milton Keynes, broke the previous record by a US team (1 hour 36 minutes) by a few seconds.
