Later this week, when Felix Baumgartner tries yet again to jump out of a helium balloon 23 miles above Earth, he will have modern science and medicine (and Red Bull) to back him up. Not so for the daredevils in this gallery, all from the 1920s and '30s; they were still impressed by electricity and penicillin.

Heck, the airplane had barely been invented when these feckless stuntmen (and one stuntwoman) decided to test the limits of aerial acrobatics.