The first man to survive going over Niagara Falls later died from slipping on an orange peel.

Bobby Leach, a circus stuntman from Cornwell, England, wanted to be the first to accomplish the Niagara Falls “triple challenge.” The challenge entailed three tasks: a barrel trip through its rapids into a whirlpool, parachuting off the Upper Suspension Bridge into the river above the rapids, and going over the Falls themselves in a barrel.

Leach accomplished the first two legs of the challenge in 1908 and 1910. On the afternoon of July 25, 1911, Bobby Leach entered his 8-foot long steel barrel and took the plunge! It took 22 minutes for the barrel to be retrieved, and though Bobby had survived, he had broken his jaw and both kneecaps!

When the Niagara Falls freezed!

In 1848, the Niagara Falls stopped flowing altogether.

In March of 1848, so much ice had flown into the Niagara Falls that the falls literally stopped moving. As reported in the Buffalo Express: "The Falls of Niagara can be compared to nothing but a mere mill dam this morning. In the memory of the oldest inhabitants, never was there so little water running over Niagara's awful precipice, as at this moment!"

Despite what you hear from chain mail, the Niagara Falls rarely freezes over completely. Photographs have captured various times when parts of the Niagara Falls became frozen. In 1912, much of the Niagara River froze. The ice formed a bridge over the falls, but then collapsed, killing three people.