Before a crowd of 5000 people, Frenchman Jean Francois Gravelet, using his professional name Emile Blondin, became the first man to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge for the Year 1860 (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, and Company, 1860), 390.