The stunt will be televised on ABC at 9 o'clock tonight.
Nik Wallenda, a circus high-wire daredevil and the seventh generation of the Flying Wallendas circus family, pedals a bicycle on a wire 12 stories above the street in Newark, N.J., in 2008. AP PhotoDaredevil Nik Wallenda, who rode a bicycle on a tightrope 20 stories above the streets of Newark, N.J., in 2008, is preparing to tightrope walk over Niagara Falls today.
Wallenda’s bike ride four years ago broke a Guinness World Record for longest bicycle ride across a tightrope without a safety net. It is his sixth world record achievement to date.
The stunt man is also well known in the Lehigh Valley for his tightrope walk across the Possessed roller-coaster at Dorney Park in 2009.
Tonight’s act will be televised on ABC’s special, “Megastunts: Highwire Over Niagara Falls — Live!” at 9 p.m. ABC will also show a countdown program beginning at 8 p.m.
Wallenda is scheduled to walk a tightrope suspended above Niagara Falls tonight. It will be televised on ABC at 9 p.m. The Wallenda family is famed for its fearless feats throughout the past two centuries. The earliest acts on record for the Wallendas were in the lats 1700s, when ancestors traveled in Austria and Hungary as jugglers, animal trainers, trapeze artists and acrobats, according to the AP.
The family has a history of performing with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, dating back to its premier show in Madison Square Garden in 1928.
The family has also seen many tragedies and deaths as family members succumb to the danger of their feats. In 2011, Wallenda and his mother performed a tightrope walk that his great grandfather failed to finish in honor of his great grandfather's life.
Wallenda is one of 14 family members who perform in troupes today.