Skydiver and world record breaker Felix Baumgartner died after a tragic accident on July 17, 2025, in Italy — but not from skydiving. He was 56 years old. Known for breaking the world record in 2012 for his stratospheric jump, Baumgartner’s death was from a paragliding incident just hours after he shared his final Instagram post.
Below, we have a breakdown of what happened to Baumgartner and more on his daredevil career.
Baumgartner was an Austrian skydiver, BASE jumper and overall daredevil. Known for multiple jumps such as from Petronas Towers in Malaysia and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Baumgartner earned global recognition for jumping down to Earth from a helium balloon in the stratosphere in October 2012. The project was known as “Red Bull Stratos.”
Extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner, the first skydiver to fall faster than the speed of sound during a 24-mile leap through the stratosphere more than a decade ago, died in a paraglider crash Thursday in Italy. He was 56.
This is him speaking after that record jump. pic.twitter.com/kK0wjFl9Sm
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 18, 2025
During an interview with CNN 10 years after the record-breaking jump, Baumgartner recalled his out-of-this-world moment.
“I’m standing there on top of the world outside of a capsule in space and in the stratosphere,” he remembered. “I looked around the sky above me was completely black. I was really trying to inhale that moment. … I had tears in my eyes when I was coming back a couple of times because you’re sitting there and you thought about that moment so many times, you know, how it would feel and how it would look like. And this is way bigger than I had anticipated.”
He also described the difficulties of the 800mph fall, noting that it was “very uncomfortable.”
