Stuntman David Blaine was unconscious and having convulsions when he was rescued from his 2.4-meter aquarium during a breath-holding stunt, his trainer said last week.
"I wasn't focused on records; I was thinking of a rescue," said trainer Kirk Krack, a free-diving expert. Blaine was convulsing and "unconscious when we brought him to the surface. If we hadn't intervened, he would still be at the bottom of the sphere doing a breath-hold."
The 33-year-old illusionist had been submerged in the aquarium with an oxygen mask for a week. Rescue divers jumped into the 7,570-liter saltwater tank Monday night and hauled him up.
He was rescued as he struggled to break a breath-holding record of 8 minutes, 58 seconds. Blaine, who had spent some 177 hours underwater, went without air for 7 minutes, 8 seconds as a finale to his endurance stunt at Lincoln Center, which was televised live on ABC.
Blaine checked himself out of Roosevelt Hospital the next day. Friends took him out of the hospital in a wheelchair and then helped him walk to a waiting car.
At home, he took a hot shower, played cards and was able to eat.
But "he was crying" Monday night, said Dr. Murat Gunel, the head of Blaine's medical team. "He still feels today that he let people down."
Blaine's liver and kidney functions had suffered while he was submerged but are now improving. His skin, which was peeling Monday night, "looks much better today," said Gunel.
His team concluded that strenuous training and losing 22.5 kilograms so his body would require less oxygen left Blaine too tired before he entered the sphere.
They said Blaine wants to try the breath-holding stunt again.
Former James Bond actor Sean Connery was voted Britain's sexiest male pensioner in a survey published Tuesday.
Despite being 75, the suave Scot had just over half of voters swooning in a poll to find the sexiest man in Britain old enough to draw a state pension, according to personal finance firm Virgin Money.
Star Trek -- The Next Generation actor Patrick Stewart, 65 in July, came second with 19 percent, ahead of the 68-year-old Silence of the Lambs actor Anthony Hopkins.
Fellow screen veteran Michael Caine, 73, was fourth with evergreen singer Cliff Richard, 65, in fifth.
The sexiest female pensioners were all actresses, with Helen Mirren, 60, topping the poll on 21 percent.
Former Bond girl Honor Blackman, 78, was a close second on 19 percent, ahead of Diana Rigg, 67, Julie Christie, 65, and Dynasty television star Joan Collins, 72.
Meanwhile 80-year-old former prime minister Margaret Thatcher was voted the least sexy pensioner in Britain.
Survey group Tickbox.net questioned 2,423 people during April.
O.J. Simpson as the star of the new candid-camera program Juiced pulls a prank involving the infamous white Bronco, drawing criticism from the family of murder victim Ronald Goldman.
In the scene taped as part of the one-hour, pay-per-view show, the former US football star pretends to sell the Bronco at a used car lot and boasts to a prospective buyer that he made the vehicle famous, according to a segment aired last week on US television show Inside Edition.
"It was good for me -- it helped me get away," Simpson said, referring to the slow-speed, televised police chase that preceded his arrest on charges of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Goldman, her friend.
Goldman's father, Fred, told Inside Edition he found Simpson's comment "morally reprehensible."
Simpson was acquitted of murder. A civil jury later held him liable for the killings and ordered him to pay $33.5 million to the Brown and Goldman families.
Much of that judgment remains unpaid.
Growing up in a rural, religious community in western Canada, Kyle McCarthy loved hockey, but once he came out at 19, he quit, convinced being openly gay and an active player was untenable. So the 32-year-old says he is “very surprised” by the runaway success of Heated Rivalry, a Canadian-made series about the romance between two closeted gay players in a sport that has historically made gay men feel unwelcome. Ben Baby, the 43-year-old commissioner of the Toronto Gay Hockey Association (TGHA), calls the success of the show — which has catapulted its young lead actors to stardom -- “shocking,” and says
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