The Ferris wheel is one of the tamer rides at any carnival. Unless you have a fear of heights the slowly rotating ride is just a simple chance to get a bird’s eye view of the surrounding area.

That wasn’t the case at a carnival in Taree, New South Wales, Australia when the Ferris wheel suddenly became the most thrilling ride anywhere. That’s what happened when an airplane slammed into the giant ride. Unlike the tragic stage collapse at the Indiana State Fair, miraculously, no one was injured in the crash, although two youngsters were just a few feet away from the tangled wreckage. They, along with the pilot and his passenger, were trapped 30 feet above the ground until the local fire department managed to rescue them. Fortunately, they only had to save the four people left stranded way above ground, unlike the firemen in Racine, Wisconsin, who had to help 17 people stranded on a Ferris wheel when it stopped due to mechanical issues.

The 52-year-old pilot of the Cheetah S200, Paul Cox, claimed he didn’t see the Ferris wheel, which sounds a bit shady to me. Unless Cox was too busy staring down at the ground trying to spot the nearest stand offering deep-fried Kool Aid or a location selling deep-fried beer, I find it a bit hard to believe that he didn’t notice the giant wheel standing tall and protruding into the sky.

Timing is everything apparently as just a few minutes earlier the Ferris wheel was packed with riders. On-and-off-again showers and rain kept some people off the carnival ride on its last turn.

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In May, students for the for-profit American College of Education were running into some problems.  Their access to email accounts and course information was locked down by Google, who had disabled their accounts.  The reason why?  A fired IT worker for the American College of Education locked the school out of their Google cloud account. […]