Word: zacchini
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DIED. MARIO ZACCHINI, 87, original "human cannonball" who performed for decades at circuses and carnivals; in Tampa, Fla. Zacchini, the last surviving member of a family troupe of cannonballs, said the toughest part about being ejected at 90 m.p.h. wasn't flying but landing...
DIED. Edmondo ("Papa") Zacchini, 87, Italian-born circus clown credited with developing the perilous, modern "human cannonball" act in 1922; in Tampa. Zacchini broke his right leg the first time he used a spring-powered cannon to hurl him 20 ft When he came to the U.S. to join the Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey circus in 1930, he had already designed compressed-air cannons that could send him or one of his six brothers flying 100 ft through the air, although by the time he stopped performing the stunt in 1934 he had suffered four other leg fractures...
Died. Hugo Zacchini, 77, a circus performer who, while musing about the trajectory of the grenades he had to duck as an Italian artilleryman during World War I, conceived his famous human cannonball act; of a stroke; in San Bernardino, Calif. Using a compressed-air cannon, Zacchini made his maiden flight (some 130 ft.) in Cairo in 1922. In 1929, John Ringling lured him to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, where he performed for another 32 years...
...Bailey big top), he presents a parade of stars-from a plumper Peter Lorre as a white-face clown to Mrs. Bing Crosby on a flying trapeze-and backs them up with everything from lion tamers and wire walkers to the Ronnie Lewis Trio, the Flying Alexanders, and Hugo Zacchini. the Human Cannon Ball. But as Ringmaster Vincent Price calls off act after act, The Big Circus often looks like a gaudily colored CinemaScope production of the Ed Sullivan Show...
Died. Ildebrando ("Papa") Zacchini, 80, Italian-born circus impresario who introduced the human cannon ball act in 1922; in Tampa, Fla. Patriarch of two generations of the often injured but never killed "Flying Zacchinis" (the stunt has led 32 non-Zacchinis to their deaths), Ildebrando lost a leg seven years ago, after he had already retired to devote himself to painting...