Daredevil David Blaine performed his latest stunts Wednesday, ascending nearly 25,000 feet (7,600 meters) into the Arizona sky while suspended from a group of huge balloons before parachuting safely to the ground.

“It’s like magic, I feel like I’m flying in the air,” Blaine told his auxiliaries on the ground after he gently took off from a desert airstrip in Page, Arizona, attached to dozens of balloons in the air. YouTube said the stunt, which was broadcast live, set a new record as the most viewed live event on YouTube Originals of all time with more than 770,000 viewers. Blaine gradually dropped small weights to speed up his ascent, wore a parachute mid-flight and tied it to an oxygen mask as it approached 24,900 feet, an altitude where most commercial aircraft travel. Tolerance risks.

His stunts include locking himself in a fish bowl, locking himself in a block of ice for two days in Times Square, and standing freely on a tall, thin pole for 35 hours in New York City. Wednesday’s stunt lasted about 30 minutes.

Blaine released himself from the group of balloons and fell free for about 30 seconds before deploying a parachute to slow his descent. “Wow, that was cool,” Blaine yelled into his radio set as he stood on the floor.

Blaine said he trained for the event for two years, including becoming a licensed pilot.

This was his first live broadcast since 2012.

(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by an NDTV crew and was published from a joint feed.)

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