Evel Knievel, the greatest daredevil who ever lived, died yesterday. He was 69.  Here's a video of him plying his craft at Ceasar's Palace on New Year's Eve, 1967:

I always admired Evel Knievel. Not because I was particularly fond of daring the devil, but because the motorcycle stunt-man didn't take shit from anybody.  I remember seeing a program about him on the History Channel in which they recounted the story of when Evel severely bludgeoned a former promoter of his with a baseball bat because the promoter had written a slanderous pulp biography about him. And he had 2 broken arms from a recent jump, but that didn't stop him from sending the promoter to the hospital. What? Yeah, I watched the History Channel. I couldn't find the remote control and the TV was at least 5 feet away from the couch, but the span seemed longer than the Snake River Canyon. More Evel vids after the jump: