In the same performance a female acrobat made a backward dive from the topmost point of the building into a net stretched about ten feet above the floor.

Nearly every large acrobatic entertainment has one of these individuals who seem to experience no difficulty in duplicating their feats night after night.
It is a common belief that people falling from great heights die in the act of descent.

An interview with the sailor who fell from the top-gallant of an East Indiaman, a height of 120 feet, into the water, elicited the fact that during the descent in the air, sensation entirely disappeared, but returned in a slight degree when he reached the water, but he was still unable to strike out when rising to the surface.

By personal observation this man stated that he believed that if he had struck a hard substance his death would have been painless, as he was sure that he was entirely insensible during the fall.
A writer in the Pall Mall Gazette, in speaking of the accidents which had happened in connection with the Forth Bridge, tells of a man who trusted himself to work at the height of 120 feet above the waters of the Firth, simply grasping a rope.

His hands became numb with cold, his grasp relaxed, and he fell backward down into the water, but was brought out alive.