In 1969, David Smith had a case of wanderlust. He was a high school math teacher, and hated his job. So he packed up his wife Jeannie and their baby and ran off with the circus, literally. Smith had been a gymnast in college, and reconnected with an old friend who was a flying trapeze artist. Smith learned how to do it, and then Jeannie joined in, too. The couple made quite a name for themselves in the 1970s with another couple of trapeze artists as The Rock Smith Flyers. But eventually David Smith found himself looking for something else. Inspired by another circus act, he designed and built a cannon to climb into and be shot out of as a human cannonball! Under the name Cannonball Smith, he became the reigning cannonball act in the US.
Along the way, David and Jeannie had six children who all grew up in the circus. The four girls and two boys learned the flying trapeze at early ages, and one by one were shot out of a cannon as they got older. All of them performed the act professionally at least once, with several doing it for years. The third child, David Smith, Jr. is now the premiere human cannonball act, known as The Bullet. Read the story of the human cannonball family at Narratively. -via Damn Interesting
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Source: neatorama