From MLive.com:
Annie Edson Taylor left her boarding house room in Bay City in October 1901 to take the ultimate bumpy ride over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
The extraordinary achievement is told by East Grand Rapids-native Chris Van Allsburg, in his new book, “Queen of the Falls.”
“I read about her in the early 1970s in an old Sports Illustrated magazine I spotted on the windowsill of a factory I worked in during the summer,” Van Allsburg, 61, recalled in a phone interview from his Providence, R.I., home with the Grand Rapids Press. “The story was about people who went over Niagara Falls, and I was amazed the first person to do it was a 62-year-old woman.”