Sunday, April 4, 2004

Giant Rubber Band Ball Fails to Bounce

BIZARRE STUNT
Giant Rubber Ball Fails To Bounce
What would you do with a 2,600-pound giant rubber ball? Why, throw it off the back of a plane, of course. The world's biggest rubber band ball has been dropped from an airplane at one mile high.

A U.S. television company offered to give the ball a spectacular send-off by filming the event and airing it on their television show, Ripley's Believe It or Not. The producers spent an estimated $4 million on the episode to film it during its descent and capture the action as it bounces to unknown heights. However, there was a problem: instead of bouncing, the ball created a massive crater in the sun-baked earth of the Mojave Desert in Arizona at 400 mph. Prior to its crash and burn plummet, the ball had been the 14-foot 8-inch circumference creation by Tony Evans, comprised of six million elastic bands.