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Bungee Jumping
Bungee Jumping can definitely be voted as one of the most popular extreme sports around. You start from a platform, which is quite high up and you take a jump where you will experience nothing but pure ecstasy. Some people will put it across as your life hanging by a rope but the more enthusiastic and passionate kinds will say that this is life itself. Bungee jumping doesn’t really require a specific environment these days as it can be done from any point that is high enough whether it is a bridge over a river or a ledge right in the center of a Mall.
Bungee jumping is one those few extreme sports where experimentation is the name of the game. People are looking for newer place to bungee jump from each day and you will even get to get a glimpse in the news. Bungee jumping came from the word bungee around 1930, which is just another name for the rubber eraser. Can you believe that? Another alternative meaning was defined by A J Hackett, who said that this is the Kiwi slang for Elastic Strap.
New Zealander, A J Hackett is considered to be the pioneer of bungee jumping and was the first ever operator of a commercial bungee jumping. Hackett made his first bungee jump from Auckland's Greenhithe Bridge in 1986. He followed it up with some more from various bridges and commercial structures including the Eiffel Tower. His acts created the market for Bungee jumping and its popularity today can be owed to him in a certain way. Today Hackett is one of the largest commercial operators of Bungee jumping in the world.
In bungee jumping you will get to jump off from a high place. There will be an elastic cord with one end tied to your ankles and the other end tied to the bungee jumping point. When you take the jump, the cord will stretch automatically and absorb the energy of the fall. First you will fly down vertically and then the cord will pull you back and this will keep happening till all the energy is dissipated. There is of course the inherent danger of jumping from several feet above the ground but according to statistics, some several million people have taken this jump successfully since 1980.
Today, Bungee jumping can be considered a safe bet thanks to the operators who maintain a strict standard code. The bungee jumping operators have to conform to the standards and guidelines that govern this sport. They have to check the cords multiple times before the jump and again after the jump. Even the smallest problem in the cord may prove to be fatal. If the operator uses a cord that is too long then bungee jumping will prove fatal. Due to some of the accidents, private operators have now started using the harness coupled with the cord for maximum safety.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the highest commercial bungee jumping took off from the Bloukrans River Bridge, in South Africa. The bungee jump used a platform just below the roadway of the bridge and the height of the platform from the valley below was 709 feet or 216m. Another bungee jumping experiment recorded as the highest ever took place at the Verzasca Dam near Locarno in Switzerland. The height of the platform from the ground was 220m or 722 feet. This jump was also featured in the opening scene of Goldeneye. In the December of 2006, the man behind it all, Hackett jumped off the Macau Tower facility in Macau S.A.R. China, recording the world's highest commercial bungee jump.
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