Free Republic

A venomous eight-inch-long spider native to Asia, whose palm-sized females cannibalize their male mates, is flying up America's east coast and spreading out west. Experts say the Jorō spider can fly 50 to 100 miles at a stretch, using their webbing as a parasail to glide in the wind, and it's now also hitching rides up east coast highways - but the creatures aren't known to pose a threat to humans or pets. However, the jury is still out on the impact that this giant spider, which is believed to have first arrived in the US a decade ago via...

0:33: FRANK01: What I recommend is that we go back to the tanker for one top-off and will be back on station in approximately two zero mike and then we move the tankers to about 40 miles south of the shoot line. The shoot line is at 1-3-0 currently. 1:01: FRANK01: A-firm. If..a..yeah we could probably make it happen we'll just need up our gas or else we will be diverting. 1:32: HUNTRESS: …when it comes to the firing line you asked for Whiskey 137 or Whiskey 122? 1:37: FRANK01: We can adjust it depending on what is easiest, but...

WWII veteran Tom Rice celebrated his birthday in epic fashion. According to First Coast News, Rice wanted to do something a little extra special to celebrate his 100th birthday and that meant parachuting out of an airplane. Rice, who jumped into Normandy on D-Day with the 101st Airborne, parachuted out of a vintage WWII plane and landed at the Coronado Hotel in San Diego over the weekend for his birthday. The WWII veteran is from San Diego and lived there when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, according to the same report. You can watch the awesome moment unfold below.

A British soldier has cheated death after crashing into someone's roof and falling into their kitchen when his parachute failed to fully deploy during a training exercise in California.

Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience! One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, ' You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down! 'How in the world did you...

During a high-altitude test on 5 August in Kiruna, Sweden, a test mass designed to represent the combined lander and rover was dropped from a stratospheric helium balloon at the height of 29km. Engineers were testing the largest of two main parachutes, measuring 35m in diameter, designed to slow the vehicle to a speed required to land safely on Mars. The European Space Agency says it's the largest ever to fly on a Mars mission. However, the test article crashed into the ground at high speed. Preliminary analysis shows that the initial steps in the parachute's deployment were carried out...

FULL TITLE: Parachutes do NOT save the lives of people who jump from aeroplanes, claim sarcastic scientists in a study designed to reveal how flawed 'research' can be 'This largely resulted from our ability to only recruit participants jumping from stationary aircraft on the ground,' the scientists wrote. The researchers revealed the parachute did not deploy for all 12 of the volunteers because of the 'short duration and altitude of falls'. They sarcastically described their study as groundbreaking'. And they added it 'should give momentary pause to experts who advocate for routine use of parachutes for jumps from aircraft in...

A 180-pound parachute deployed in just four-tenths of a second -- twice the speed of sound -- setting a new record. The powerful parachute is needed for the heaviest payload yet to hit the surface of the red planet.

caused the skydiver’s death, according to the agency. The FAA said she was using her own equipment. Usually, FAA probes into such situations are limited to if the chute was packed properly and by the appropriate person. Fellow skydivers said she was experienced in the extreme sport. Meanwhile, the skydiving center itself has a decades-long history of deaths and was investigated by federal agents earlier this year, according to KTXL. Nineteen people have died there since the facility opened in the early 1980s, with six of them between 2016 and 2018. After trouble in 2016, 20 center instructors were suspended...

The United States Geological Survey is reporting a magnitude 4.3 earthquake occurred approximately 30 miles northwest of Parachute shortly after 4 a.m. Friday morning. The USGS is reporting the depth of the quake was about 3 miles. At this point, there are no reports of damage or injuries.

Richard N. Bolles, a former Harvard physics major, Episcopal minister and career counselor whose own twisting vocational path led to his writing “What Color Is Your Parachute?” — the most popular job-hunter’s manual of the 1970s and beyond — died on Friday in San Ramon, Calif. He was 90... Mr. Bolles (pronounced bowls) originally self-published his manual in 1970 as a photocopied how-to booklet for unemployed Protestant ministers. In 1972, he recast it to appeal to a wider audience and found an independent publisher in Berkeley, Calif., willing to print small batches so that it could be frequently updated. Since...

A New York architecture firm has unveiled designs for a skyscraper that is out of this world. Deemed the ‘world’s tallest building ever’, Analemma Tower will be suspended from an orbiting asteroid 31,068 miles (50,000 km) above the Earth– and the only way to leave is by parachute.

Luke Aikins, 42, a veteran of 18,000 jumps, completed the stunt without mishap, landing almost in the middle of the 100ft by 100ft net. Taking only a few moments to regain his composure, Mr Aikins dusted himself off, clambered out of the net and jumped into the arms of his very relieved wife, Monica. The leap, which was broadcast by Fox, was watched by other members of the family and a crowd of well-wishers packed into an improvised spectator stand in the California desert.

You didn’t misread that headline: Bernie Sanders might enter his Friday rally in Cloverville, California by skydiving in. NorCal Skydiving told Bay-area newspaper The Press Democrat that they were approached by a Sanders campaign staffer Wednesday about the possibility of making an entrance from the sky. The following day, a campaign staffer went skydiving as a sort of practice run, but there’s still no word about whether they’ll go through with the idea.

SAN BRUNO (CBS SF) — A skydiver posted video of himself having a seizure during a jump that quickly racked up views on YouTube. The diver posted the video on San Bruno-based YouTube under the username Nomadic Adrenaline showing what he describes as “possibly the scariest moment of my life.”

Google senior vice president Alan Eustace just beat the world record for highest-altitude space jump, The New York Times reports. A helium-filled balloon carried him 135,908 feet to nearly the top of the stratosphere — more than 25 miles — above the ground, before he cut himself loose and plunged toward the earth at speeds that peaked at more than 800 miles per hour.

YouTube:Skydiver Dies During Record Bid One of 222 parachutists looking to break a record probably of most people to parachute in one jump (they don't say exactly what the record was for) died as a result of her malfunctioning main parachute that opened too low for the reserve to release properly. Diana Paris of Berlin was an said to have been an experienced skydiver. When making a deliberate attempt for a controlled landing while jumping out of a plane you can never be too prepared, I suppose.

A skydiver has died after he fell out of his parachute harness during a jump at SkyDance Skydiving in Davis. Yolo County sheriff's Sgt. Hector Bautista says the 23-year-old man made the jump in Davis over the Yolo County Airport at about 6 p.m. Saturday. He died at a hospital. His name hasn't been released but Bautista says he was an experienced skydiver who lived in San Jose. Yolo County officials said they were sent to the scene around 6 p.m. Deputies located the body of the deceased skydiver about 1 mile southeast of the SkyDance drop zone. His canopy...

HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. -- One by one, Airmen from the 23rd Special Tactics Squadron lined up at the back of a C-130, paused, then stepped off the aircraft Oct. 16, completing their free fall training jump into the picturesque water of Florida's Emerald Coast. For Staff Sgt. Johnnie Yellock Jr., this jump was two years and 28 surgeries in the making. In 2011, Yellock, a 23rd STS combat controller, was deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. While on a mission checking Afghan local police outposts, his vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device. "When I opened...

North Korea carries out parachute drills on Chinese border 12 April, 2013 Teddy Ng North Korean soldiers parachute over the North Korean town of Sinuiju in a photo taken from the border city of Dandong. Photo: Kyodo North Korean soldiers carried out parachute drills along the border with China yesterday as Taiwan's government became the first to urge its citizens to delay visiting South Korea. More than 50 North Korean soldiers conducted drills for about two hours in Sinuiju, which neighbours Dandong, Liaoning province, Kyodo News Agency reported.