Desperate woman risks it all at the Falls

The first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel took the historic plunge on Oct. 24, 1901 and lived to tell about it.

In fact, Annie Edson Taylor, who survived the death-defying stunt with nothing worse than a few cuts and bruises, talked about little else for the rest of her miserable life.  But the 63-year-old former schoolteacher from Texas might have been better off had she perished in the foolhardy attempt.

Annie had always been an independent woman.  She did not remarry after the death in the late 1860s of her one and only husband, choosing instead to stand on her own two feet and answer to no one.