Spider Dan's Daring Ascent: Scaling the Sears Tower

On Memorial Day, May twenty fifth, nineteen eighty one, Dan Goodwin did something no one had ever done before. Dressed up as Spider Man, he climbed at the time the world's tallest building, the Sears Tower in Chicago, Illinois, one hundred and ten floors, using nothing but suction cups and skyhooks. Here's the story behind this iconic moment that led to a little bit of a new sport today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history every day. For today's trivia question to watch out for, what country was the first documented person to climb the outside of a building? Now, Dan Goodwin had actually a noble reason for doing this climb, but he wasn't the first person to climb the outside of a building. And actually the term for doing this is called buildering. It's a form of rock climbing, often known as urban climbing or structuring, and it's basically climbing on the outside of a building. But it's very different than rock climbing and in some ways has gained more popularity recently with the sport of parker kind of being an offshoot of this buildering brand. Now, the first documentation of someone building was when Jeffrey Winthromp Young at Cambridge University climbed to the roof of Cambridge University in England. Now students have been doing this for years as it's a unique structure, but he was the first documented person to make it to the top. And one of the most notable building climbers was an American Harry Gardiner, who began building back in the early nineteen hundreds and had climbed over seven hundred buildings with no special equipment. This act had actually become illegal in many locations as it's very dangerous, and as skyscrapers have gotten more streamlined and are pretty much just glass on the outside, has become even more of a challenge to do. But this wasn't why Dan Goodwin decided to climb the Sears Tower. It actually Dan had gotten into rock climbing at an early age. He enjoyed being outdoors. He actually ended up being homeless while he was in high school and traveling around to different locations and loved the Arctic climbing and went to Las Vegas as there was great rock climbing in the area, and he had gotten into a new form of rock climbing called free soloing, which means you are alone without equipment, without harnesses, without safety and he had been doing this for a while around Las Vegas. But on November twenty first, nineteen eighty, Goodwin saw that the MGN Grand in Las Vegas was on fire. He was actually there witnessing it, and he saw there was people in the middle. People at the top were getting helped by helicopters, and people couldn't get to the bottom because that's where the flames had started. So there was people in the middle that really were having an issue. And he knew from his experienced rock climbing he could climb up there and help these people, and he actually crops the safety ropes to try to help them. He was stopped by police and firefighters and he said, I can help them. I know exactly how to help them. And he was brought to the police chief and told him I know exactly how to climb and help these people. And the police chief said have you ever done this before? He said no, and he said okay, get out and let us do our job, as he didn't want to put another person's life in danger, which is understandable, but this stayed with Dan as he watched people die in this fire. Over eighty people died in this fire, and it stuck with him, and he actually set up a meeting to go meet with the firefighters after this in Las Vegas, giving them their plan for this and showing them how this could be prevented the future. But because he had no experience climbing buildings, he's like, how would you do this? They ignored him because he didn't know, and that's actually what set him on this path. He actually asked him, have you ever climbed a skyscraper? And Dan's response was no. He said, then get out of my office. And so that's what set this in motion as Dan wanted to find a way to do this, and he actually did it by looking at construction people. How were they getting up there to work on these buildings, and he saw they had these giant suction cups that they would hold the glass to put it into place. He thought maybe he could use something like that, and he actually did use a version of that. It was a section cup with some ropelike things for his feet to put it into, with some skyhooks, but otherwise was a very simplistic system and that's what he used to climb the Sears Tower. And he chose the Seer's Tower because then it was the tallest building in the world and wanted to show that this could be attempted. Now, this was his first time ever really climbing this high, as before he had just climbed small buildings or in alley ways on the side of buildings going back and forth. He hadn't climbed something this massive, and Memorial Day was a good chance as there was less people around, and he started climbing early in the morning and a friend of him actually had told him to wear a Spider Man outfit as it would give him more tension, and that's where he got the nickname Spider Dan. And suspite attempts from security and law enforcement to get him off the building as he was climbing up, he was able to move and maneuver away from them and make all the way up to the roof after one hundred and ten floors in seven hours. Now this was dangerous. He was dealing with high altitude winds, slippery glass, and the unknown because if anything bad happened, he would fall to his death and hundreds of people were now watching him as he was making not only local news, but national news. And when he made it to the top, he was quickly arrested but later let out on just twenty five dollars bail. They arrested him because they didn't want other attempts to repeat this, as this was a very dangerous stunt. And he continued this year to climb multiple buildings as he climbed the Renaissance Tower in Dallas, Texas and the John Hancock Building in Chicago, and when he did this, Chicago was very upset as he was told to never climb another building in the city, but the John Hancock Building. He was able to get the top of the one hundred story building despite firemen using window washing machines to try to get him down and even spraying water down on top of him al as he climbed, which could have cost him to fall to his death, and they allowed him to get to the top of the hundry story John Hancock Building, but again he was arrested and he waited a couple of years before he climbed again. When he on Memorial Day nineteen eighty three, he used his suction cup device to climb the North Tower of the World Trade Center, making it all the way to the top, again being arrested as well. He wouldn't ever serve very long times for this as they were all misdemeter offenses, but it didn't stop him from continued to climb to try to raise awareness for how this could help firefighters in the line of duty, and on September sixth, twenty ten, he actually climbed the Millennium Tower in San Francisco to help raise awareness for cancer, as he had recently been diagnosed with cancer himself, and Dan was actually featured on Stanley's Superhumans in a short lived series on Disney Plus. Despite his efforts to help give a new process to firefighters, his method of climbing has not been officially adopted by firefighters as they use other means to help and they've had more success having higher ladders and the use of other equipment. But he did raise a good question on how do you help save people on skyscrapers. Though they didn't adopt his idea, I think it did give them thought to look into options to help because skyscrapers do present a unique challenge for firefighters, but training them in this way would cost a lot of money and put more danger into a firefighter as it took a long time for him to climb and he could be put in danger as well. But I think Dan's mission is a great one because he saw something wrong and he put time and effort and try to get something changed. And though his idea wasn't taken, it doesn't mean he didn't change something. Sometimes our plan does not always go as planned, and I want to plan for you to leave us a review or rating wherever you're listening. If you take a screenshot and send that to us on our socials or email it to us at Daily Sports History at gmail dot com, we will send you something special because it brightens my day and I want to brighten your day. Right back and come back tomorrow for more Daily Sports History. For today's trivia question, what country was the first documented person to climb the outside of a building? The answer is England.