Philippe Petit walked a wire between the Twin Towers
On this day · 7 August 1974
On a August morning in 1974, a young Frenchman strolled across a steel cable strung 1,350 feet above lower Manhattan.
A little past seven on the morning of August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit stepped off the South Tower of the World Trade Center and onto a one-inch steel cable he and his accomplices had secretly rigged overnight. There was no net, no harness, and roughly 1,350 feet of empty air beneath him.
Over the next hour he made eight crossings of the 131-foot gap between the towers, pausing to kneel, lie down, and salute the crowds gathering on the sidewalks far below.
His feet were actually leaving the wire, and then he would resettle back on the wire again.
When he finally stepped back onto the roof, police were waiting. Petit was arrested and sent for psychiatric evaluation, but charges were dropped on the condition that he perform a free show for children in Central Park. The stunt, later dubbed the artistic crime of the century, turned an unfinished, unloved pair of skyscrapers into something New Yorkers suddenly felt tender about.
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