Saturday, March 30, 2013

Catching Up With The World's Youngest Female Cannonball


Elliana Grace Hentoff-Killian is on tour with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey show Built to Amaze!
(Feld Entertainment)
by NPR Staff
Mar 28, 2013 (Talk of the Nation) — Elliana Grace Hentoff-Killian grew up in the circus. She mastered her first circus act at 6, when she learned the Spanish web -- an aerial act performed on a rope. Now, at 20, she is currently the world's youngest female human cannonball and is touring with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey.
Elliana Grace Hentoff-Killian grew up in the circus.
She made her circus debut at age 2 and mastered her first circus act at 6, when she learned the Spanish web — an aerial act performed on a rope. Now, at 20, she is currently the youngest female human cannonball in the world.
"I never thought I was going to be doing the cannon. I was always the one sitting there saying, 'You've got to be insane to get shot out of a cannon,' " she tells NPR's Celeste Headlee. "And, of course, that's what I'm doing now."
 
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She is on tour with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey show Built to Amaze! The cannon she uses is about 24 feet long.
"I go all the way down to the bottom of the barrel, and then I shoot about 100 feet across all three rings and land in an air bag," she explains.
"I line the air bag up in relation to the cannon. So wherever it ends up shooting down, then the air bag is moved."
She says she travels about 65 mph, experiencing a G-force of seven, about the same as an astronaut re-entering the atmosphere.
On her first time out of the cannon, she was so scared and sore that she didn't want to do it again.
read more:
http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/175573690/catching-up-with-the-world-s-youngest-female-cannonball

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