Shortly after 7 a.m. on Aug. 7, 1974, French performance artist Philippe Petit stepped out from the roof of the World Trade Center’s South Tower and onto a one-inch thick cable, stretching 140 feet across to the North Tower.

With no safety net or harness, all he had was a balancing pole for company – and a drop of 1,360-feet and certain death below him should he make one wrong step.

Philippe Petit, a young Frenchman artist tight rope walker, gave the most spectacular high-wire performance of all time.
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Petit performed the act shortly after 7 a.m. on Aug. 7, 1974.
Polaris

“I was a little anxious on that first crossing because we never checked how strong the anchor point was on the other side,” Petit tells The Post. “It wasn’t great, to be honest, but it was good enough.”

Audacious, dangerous and entirely illegal, Petit’s wire walk was called the ‘artistic crime of the century’ and was years in the planning. Using covert surveillance and endless subterfuge, Petit managed to smuggle a huge amount of equipment up the 110 floors of the South Tower before his friend and collaborator, Jean-Louis Blondeau, fired a cable across to the North Tower using a bow and arrow.

He even chartered a helicopter so he could take aerial photographs of the rooftops of the Twin Towers.

He was released without charge on the condition he perform a free show for children in Central Park. //

He also found himself in the Guinness Book of World Records, much to his annoyance.

“My art cannot be defined by numbers or records but the irony is I unwittingly found myself in it whether I liked it or not,” he said. “I never I wanted to be in it alongside people who can eat 10 pizzas in a minute.” //

“Here in America I am called a daredevil or a stuntman, like I’m Evel Knievel on a motorbike or Harry Houdini, but nothing could be further from the truth. My art is not death-defying, it is life-affirming.

“I want to inspire people and to believe they can move mountains. I want them to look up without fear.

“I am a poet in the sky.”