21 January: Tightrope walking

On the birthday of Karl Wallenda, ten things you might not know about tightrope walking.

1. Another word for it is funambulism. That comes from the Greek, "funis" meaning rope and "ambulare", meaning to walk.
2. In ancient Greece and Rome, people who could walk a tightrope were much admired, but the skill was never considered a sport, so it was never an Olympic event and stayed within the confines of entertainment.
3. In France in the 5th century, rope walking was effectively banned - it was forbidden near churches - and most fairs, where such entertainment usually took place, were always held near churches. In the 17th and 18th century in England, tightrope walkers may not have been banned, but were generally thought to be disreputable types.
4. Napoleon Bonaparte was a fan of tightrope walking - watching it, rather than doing it! In his time there was a famous funambulist called Madame Saqui, who performed for Napoleon many times, with a backdrop of fireworks. When Napoleon's heir was born, she was part of the celebration. On that occasion she walked a wire between the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral. She carried on working into her 70s and gets a mention in Thackeray's novel, Vanity Fair.
5. The first person to walk a tightrope across Niagara Falls was The Great Blondin, in 1859. He stopped halfway across to drink a Beer. He performed the stunt several more times, doing ever more crazy stunts like riding a Bicycle across, stopping in the middle to cook an omelette and carrying his manager across on his back. One of his contemporaries, the Great Farini, carried a Washing machine on his back as he walked over the Falls on a tightrope, pausing in the middle to wash some handkerchiefs, which he gave out to fans at the end.
6. The first person to walk across the Grand Canyon on a tightrope was Nik Wallenda, Karl's great-grandson, in 2013.
7. There are different types of rope or wire walking. Tightwire is walking along a rope or wire tensioned between two points, possibly using an Umbrella or a pole for balance, and including tricks such as juggling as they walk. Highwire is similar, only higher up. There's no official point where tightwire becomes highwire but generally if the rope/wire is more than 20 feet/6 metres off the ground, it's highwire. Skywalk is crossing a wire at even greater heights, such as between two buildings or across a canyon. There's also such a thing as slackwire walking, where the rope or wire is more flexible. The methods of balance between the two are completely different.
8. What a tightrope walker must do in order not to fall, is lower their centre of gravity. not by leaning forward, because this alters a person's sense of location, but by standing up straight and bending the knees, bringing the hips closer to the wire.
9. The process is made even harder by the fact that the rope or wire will rotate with each step, so the walker must increase their rotational inertia by positioning their body to fight against the tendency of the rope to rotate. Using a pole as a balance tool helps with this.
10. I'll finish with some world records. The longest tightrope walk ever was 130m achieved by American Bello Nock in 2010. It took him 15 minutes to walk the rope, attached to poles on board a cruise liner. The highest was achieved by Freddy Nock (from Switzerland - I could find no evidence the two are related) in 2015 when he walked a rope between two mountains in Switzerland. Freddy also holds the record for the fastest tightrope walk between two Hot air balloons. Maurizio Zavatta, from Italy, holds the record for the fastest 100m tightrope walk - backwards. He did it in 1min 57 seconds in 2014.

A Tale of Two Sisters

During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.

Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.

As Jessica puts the first part of her revenge plan in motion, she finds herself with an agonising decision to make. Before she can decide, the Alliance come for her, determined to make her do their bidding. This time, it's the Alliance who leave her, crippled and at the mercy of the Warner family, who have no idea who the Alliance's Black Rose really is.

Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?

Jessica's older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?

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