Rope Swinging facts

While investigating facts about Rope Swinging, I found out little known, but curios details like:

There is a small island in Shrewsbury, MA that doesn't belong to anyone in particular. One local man is crusading to name it Busta Rhymes Island. When asked why, he said it was because the island had "rope-swinging, blueberries, and . . . stuff Busta would enjoy".

Busta Rhymes Island, a 40x40 island in Central Massachusetts unofficially named by a local who is trying to make the name official through common usage. When asked why the name "Busta Rhymes Island," the local said "It has rope swings, blueberries, and... stuff Busta would enjoy."

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 12 of the best facts about Rope Swinging I managed to collect.

1. The actress Elizabeth Shue's older brother was swinging from a rope over a pond when the rope broke. He was impaled on the branches of a tree and died while his siblings watched helplessly.

2. In 1964 Zambia tried to form a space program to send a team of "Afronauts" and 2 cats to Mars. Training included being put in a steel drum and rolled down a small hill to simulate G-forces and swinging on a rope to simulate a zero gravity environment.

3. Elisabeth Shue, the actress who played Ali from "The Karate Kid", witnessed her brother die in a freak accident when a rope swing broke and he was impaled by a tree branch.

4. The effort to name a small, unnamed island in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts "Busta Rhymes Island." It has "rope-swinging, blueberries, and … stuff Busta would enjoy."

5. At the height of the space race, Zambia once hoped to put a girl and her cats on Mars using a system "derived from a catapult." Training included rolling down a hill in an oil drum and swinging from a long rope.

6. A man from Nebraska used a rope swing in his youth, but stopped out of concern that the oak tree branch it was hung from would snap. 40 years later, he passed by the tree and saw the same branch come crashing down.

7. What happens when you light steel wool and swing it on a rope.

8. In 2017, two travel influencers were banned from all U.S. public lands. Their violations included driving an RV across the Bonneville Salt Flats, walking on Yellowstone’s hot springs, and tying a rope swing to the Corona Arch. A year later, they fell off a waterfall in British Columbia.