“AT HOME IN THE AIR”
In his youth, Baumgartner, who was born in the Austrian city of Salzburg, worked as a car mechanic and repaired motorcycles as he searched for ways to take to the sky.
Having completed his first skydive in his teens, he improved his skills in the Austrian military. Over time, he built up an impressive portfolio of stunts.
One of his first records was in 1999 for the lowest BASE dive from the hand of Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil, which is 29m above the ground.
BASE is an acronym for four things that can be jumped from: buildings, antennas, spans and earth.
A licensed helicopter pilot and gas balloonist whose hobbies included boxing and climbing, he also twice set world records for the highest BASE jump from a building.
In 2003, he completed the first winged “freefall crossing” of the English Channel, leaping out of an aircraft and flying the rest of the way to from England to Calais in northern France with a pair of carbon wings.
Though never quite in the limelight as much again as in 2012, Baumgartner continued to seek thrills throughout his life, flying loopings with helicopters and driving race cars.
His long career of daredevil jumps included skydiving across the English Channel and parachuting off the Petronas Towers in Malaysia.
Dividing his time between Switzerland and the US, Baumgartner commented avidly on politics and rubbed shoulders with Austrian far-right politicians in his native country.
In Austria, he was also known for courting controversy with views that included expressing support for dictatorship as a system of government.
On social media, he mocked the fight against climate change, actively speaking out against Green parties, and LGBTQ rights.
In 2016, he faced a storm of criticism when suggesting that anti-migration Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban should win a Nobel Peace Prize for protecting his country.
Baumgartner was fined £1,500 (US$2,300) after he punched a Greek truck driver in the face during a 2010 altercation that broke out in a traffic jam near Salzburg.