Yes. Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian skydiver famous for jumping from the edge of space, died on 17 July 2025 in a motorised paragliding accident in Italy. He was 56.
He fell to the ground near the swimming pool of a hotel while flying over the village of Porto Sant’Elpidio in Italy’s eastern Marche region. The town’s mayor, Massimiliano Ciarpella, said early reports suggested he may have suffered a sudden medical issue in mid-air. Baumgartner, known as “Fearless Felix,” made headlines in 2012 when he broke the world record for the highest skydive, and the sound barrier, by jumping from a balloon more than 39 km (128,000 ft) up in the stratosphere. Earlier, in 1999, he set the record for the world’s lowest base jump, from the 30 m (98 ft) hand of Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue, and the record for the highest parachute jump from a building, from the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. In 2003 he crossed the English Channel wearing a jumpsuit with carbon-fibre wings.
Source: BBC News, “Man who jumped from edge of space dies paragliding” (17 July 2025)
Image: Felix Baumgartner in 2013, Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.