People can be incredibly dumb.

We expect some people to be immature. For instance, teenage boys tend to make idiotic decisions — partly because they are addicted to adrenalin, and partly because they have pubescent prefrontal cortexes. (READ MORE from Aubrey Gulick: Rosenberg: The Architect Behind the Third Reich)

But there are also people we tend to believe have obtained wisdom with age and are, therefore, unlikely to make hair-brained decisions. Without attempting to sound ageist, 63-year-old schoolmarms tend to fall into that category.

So, few people expected Annie Edson Taylor to seal herself in a barrel insulated by a mattress and then tumble-down Niagara Falls. Even fewer people expected her to survive, but Taylor did both.

Taylor was born in upstate New York on Oct. 24, 1838 — which is actually important to this story — and, while studying to become a schoolteacher, met her future husband, David. She graduated with honors, got married, and was widowed by the Civil War. She never remarried.

Instead, Taylor jumped between jobs and places. She tried Sault Ste. Marie, San Antonio, and Mexico City before finally landing in Bay City, Mich. The year was 1900 and Taylor — filling out the 1900 Federal Census — decided to pretend she was about 20 years younger. She listed her age at 42. (READ MORE: Beauty Is Truth Against Woke Fantasy)

In Bay City, bad luck pursued Taylor. Her house burned down, and her investments were unsuccessful, leaving her penniless. Preferring to live as though she were wealthy, she decided that she needed some cash and fast. The best way to get it, she reasoned, was to become famous. The best way to become famous was to do something so hair-brained that no one could forget it.

So, she designed a barrel, took it to Niagara Falls, and then coaxed some friends — apparently not very good ones — into hauling her and her barrel into the middle of the river just south of Goat Island. The day was Oct. 24, 1901 — Taylor’s 63rd birthday (or 43rd, if you asked her). (READ MORE: Women in the Conservative Media Vanguard)

Twenty minutes later, Taylor’s barrel was recovered on the other end of Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side of the river. She was certainly shaken and had a gash on her head but was otherwise quite alive and had successfully earned the title of the first person stupid enough to go over the falls in a barrel and survive the experience. She told the press just after her ride:

If it was with my dying breath, I would caution anyone against attempting the feat … I would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon, knowing it was going to blow me to pieces than make another trip over the Fall.

As it turns out, the press wasn’t all that interested in the story. She got about 15 minutes of fame, which she tried to drag out by writing her memoirs. The trouble was that her manager, Frank M. Russell, really liked her barrel and decided to run away with it — Taylor spent her savings hiring private detectives to hunt it down.

This article originally appeared on Aubrey’s Substack, Pilgrim’s Way, with the title “Fifteen Minutes of Fame,” on Oct. 22, 2023.