National Geographic selected ten amazing people for their Adventurers of the Year. You can read about each one and then vote for your favorite to win the People’s Choice Award (through January 18th). One of those finalists is rider Danny MacAskill, whose stunt videos have gone viral over the past couple of years. Read more about him at NatGeo’s Intelligent Travel blog. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!

Aaron “Wheelz” Fotheringham {wiki} has spina bifida and began using a wheelchair when he was three yers old. He has been confined to a wheelchair since the age of eight. Fotheringham achieved the double backflip last weekend. -via the Daily What

French daredevil Henri Rochatin, now 65, has been performing stunts since the age of 5. In this video, he balances on a chair on two glasses which are on top of another chair, which is balanced on four glasses, over a precipice 12,486 feet high in the French Alps.

via The Presurfer

63-year-old Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to successfully go over Niagara Falls in 1901, when she took the plunge inside a wooden barrel. A schoolteacher by trade, Taylor had found herself in financial trouble, and conceived the stunt in the hope that it would gain her fame and fortune. She had a specially designed barrel filled with padding, and after testing it with an ordinary house cat, went over the Horseshoe Falls section of Niagara herself on October 24, 1901. Amazingly, she survived the 173-foot plunge with little more than a small gash on her head.

You can see videos of some of the more recent daredevils in this list. Link

I have always had a fascination with planes and fighter jets ever since my Dad used to take the family and I to the Dubai Airshow when I was really young where we got to watch some of the craziest and most talented pilots showing off their stuff. I remember once seeing the Blue Angels on display and they blew me away! Still to this day their stuff is top notch and gives me thrills to see them fly.

Lucky for us we get to see the view from one of their cockpits as they perform some hair raising maneuvers. I trust I won’t be the only one who gets goosebumps and a few butterflies in their stomachs as you get to see how amazingly close they get to each other and how in tune they are to each others positions. Mind you it’s almost 10 minutes of video!

* Also, if you are prone to motion sickness be careful watching this! Thank you SydneyClaire for reminding me to put a motion sickness warning!

** This is raw footage so the sound will be a little loud so please take care to drop the level just a bit after hitting play! Don’t want to hurt your ears!