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The Boardwalk long served as a celebrated center of thrills and entertainment for beach visitors, featuring acts that ranged from the turn-of-the-century water carnival's Slide for Life daredevils and world record-holding swimmers and divers to aerialists, acrobats, and skydivers. Among its performers were fire-divers who were set ablaze before plunging into the water, Shirley Wightman on the flying trapeze, and Ruth Kahl, known as the Human Submarine, for swimming 303 feet completely underwater. Don "Bosco" Patterson and his 12-year-old assistant Harry Murray rode a 750-foot cable from the roof of the Casino and dropped into the ocean seconds before striking the Pleasure Pier, a feat California ruled too perilous to continue in 1940. In 1976, Steve "Unique" McPeak and Stephen Walenda walked the thousand-foot length of the Boardwalk's Sky Glider cable.
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Santa Cruz, California · United States
