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Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

FILE- In this April 15, 1944 photo, members of The Flying Wallendas' famous high wire act with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey's Circus, perform their death-defying double pinwheel in Madison Square Garden in New York. From left are Herman, Henrietta, Helen, and Karl Wallenda. On Friday, June 15, 2012, Nik Wallenda, a seventh generation Flying Wallenda,will attempt a high-wire crossing of the Niagra Falls gorge between the United States and Canada. The event will be covered on live television. (AP Photo)

When Nik Wallenda sets out for his tightrope walk over Niagara Falls late Friday, he'll be adding another chapter to his family's storied daredevil history, which dates back more than two centuries.

Wallenda has said he is disappointed about being made to wear a tether by the event's sponsor, ABC, since his family has performed over the years without such safety precautions.

Here's a look at the first family of funambulists, along with some notable feats and tragedies:

1. The Wallendas trace their fearless roots to 1780 Austria-Hungary, when ancestors travelled as a band of acrobats, aerialists, jugglers, animal trainers and trapeze artists.
2. The signature performance of the group that came to be known in the 1940s as "The Flying Wallendas" was the seven-person chair pyramid: Two pairs of performers walk the wire, each supporting another aerialist on a pole. Those two aerialists, in turn, carry a pole upon which the seventh member of the troupe balances in a chair.
3. The chair pyramid went terribly wrong in 1962 when a misstep at the State Fair Coliseum in Detroit sent two men to their deaths and paralyzed a third performer.
4. In 1944, the Wallendas were performing at a Connecticut circus when a fire broke out. All the Wallendas slid down ropes to safety, but 168 people died.
5. The following year, Rietta Wallenda, sister-in-law of family patriarch Karl Wallenda, fell to her death in Nebraska.
6. Family patriarch and Nik's great-grandfather Karl Wallenda became a featured performer, doing "sky walks" between buildings and across stadiums including the Astrodome.
7. In 1978, Karl Wallenda fell to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotel towers in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
8. Angel Wallenda, who married into the family at age 17, performed with an artificial limb on the high-wire in 1990 after being stricken with cancer and having her right leg amputated below the knee. She died at age 28 in 1996.
9. Since first stepping on a wire when he was 2, Nik Wallenda has earned six Guinness records, the latest in October 2008. That's when, 20 stories over the streets of Newark, New Jersey, he travelled the longest distance and the greatest height by bicycle on a wire, riding 150 feet (45 metres).
10. In 2011, Nik and his mother, Delilah, honoured his late great-grandfather by walking Karl's last route at the same time, a feat that included Nik stepping over his mother in the middle of the wire.
11. Fourteen family members perform today in various troupes.