You are never too old to do something amazing

14 September 2016

Written by: Nick Wake: Marketing Director, iFLY UK

At iFLY Manchester, we've been massively inspired of late by the wonderful Glen Mills, an 82 yr young lady who is wheelchair bound and suffers from Multiple Sclerosis. Glen flys with us every week, proving that you are never too young to amazing things, even when you have to overcome physical hurdles to do them.

Glenn's exploits got us wondering what other amazing challenges have been completed by others of advanced years.

Here are ten that we found:

  • At 71, Katsusuke Yanagisawa, a retired Japanese schoolteacher, became the oldest person to climb Mt. Everest.
  • At 72, Margaret Ringenberg flew around the world.
  • At 75, cancer survivor Barbara Hillary became one of the oldest people, and the first black woman, to reach the North Pole.
  • At 77, John Glenn became the oldest person to go into space.
  • At 80, Christine Brown of Laguna Hills, CA, flew to China and climbed the Great Wall.
  • At 81, Bill Painter became the oldest person to reach the 14,411-foot summit of Mt. Rainier.
  • At 82, William Ivy Baldwin became the oldest tightrope walker, crossing the South Boulder Canyon in Colorado on a 320-foot wire.
  • At 86, Katherine Pelton swam the 200-meter butterfly in 3 minutes, 1.14 seconds, beating the men’s world record for that age group by over 20 seconds.
  • At 92, Paul Spangler finished his 14th marathon.
  • At 99, Teiichi Igarashi climbed Mt. Fuji.

Pretty impressive huh? Like so much in life, it’s all in the mind.

Reproduced from Business Insider, March 2014