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Extreme skydiver Baumgartner dies in paragliding accident

Austrian skydiver and extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner has died in a paragliding accident in Italy, according to local media. The 56-year-old shot to global fame in 2012 with his record-breaking free-fall from space.

Born in Salzburg, Baumgartner made headlines as a spectacular base-jumper for many years, jumping from iconic structures such as the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur and the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. Felix Baumgartner leapt from a capsule more than 39 kilometers above the Earth in 2012Image: Red Bull Content Pool/ABACA/IMAGOBaumgartner, who had a tattoo on his right arm reading "born to fly," regularly posted videos of his paragliding flights on social media. In recent years, he made headlines of a different sort with controversial political statements, criticizing German and Austrian migration policies and opining that a "moderate dictatorship" would be preferable to a democracy, in which "you can't move anything."

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