Hugo & Mario Zacchini: Human Projectiles

Circuses with wild animals and death defying acts are a remnant of our past. Zacchini the human projectile was perhaps the most death defying circus act of them all. I remember seeing Hugo Zacchini airborne and flying across the tent into a net when the Clyde Beatty Circus came to Bellingham, WA. Multiple Zacchini family members, guys and gals, served as cannon fodder from the 1920’s into the ‘60s. Sometimes two or more Zacchinis were blasted from the cannon one after another. The distance record, held by Emmanuel Zacchini, was 175 ft at a velocity of 145 miles per hour. Sometimes the human projectile was shot high in the air, even over a ferris wheel or two. The explosive crack and smoke at discharge was subterfuge: Compressed air actually propelled the human cannon ball.

This video appears to be an old newsreel that would have been filler between shows at movie theaters. First you'll see the most famous of them all -- Hugo Zacchini demonstrating the standard one man cannonball routine. That is followed by a bigger cannon from which Hugo and his brother Mario are both sent flying. In the 1930s, this stunt by the Zacchinis was a daily feature at the Steel Pier Amusement Park in Atlantic City, NJ. This performance was filmed on July 18, 1938. Seventeen years later, Hugo Zacchini replicated his part of the act in Bellingham at the then Carolina Street Circus Grounds.


Steel Pier Amusement Park, Atlantic City, NJ. July 18, 1938. Hugo and Mario Zacchini