Evel Knievel, 69, Daredevil on a Motorcycle, Dies
Las Vegas News Bureau, via Associated Press.

By RICHARD SEVERO
Published: December 1, 2007
Evel Knievel, the hard-living, death-defying adventurer who went from stealing motorcycles to riding them in a series of spectacular airborne stunts in the 1960s and ’70s that brought him worldwide fame as the quintessential daredevil performer, died yesterday in Clearwater, Fla. He was 69.

Evel Knievel in one of the typical star-spangled jumpsuits he wore for his stunts.
His death was confirmed by a granddaughter, Krysten Knievel, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Knievel had been in failing health for years with diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung condition. In 1999, he underwent a liver transplant after nearly dying of hepatitis C, which he believed he had contracted from a blood transfusion after one of his many violent spills.

Only a few days before his death, he and the rap artist Kanye West announced they had settled a federal lawsuit over Mr. West’s use of Mr. Knievel’s trademarked image in a music video.

Mr. Knievel amazed and horrified onlookers on Dec. 31, 1967, by vaulting his motorcycle 151 feet over the fountains of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, only to land in a spectacularly bone-breaking crash.

He then continued to win fame and fortune by getting huge audiences to watch him — typically dressed in star-spangled red, white and blue — roar his motorcycle up a ramp, fly over 10, 15 or 20 cars parked side by side, and come down on another ramp. Perhaps his most spectacular stunt, another disaster, was an attempt to jump an Idaho canyon on a rocket-powered motorcyle in 1974.

Click here for full story