"Mad" Mike Hughes

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Updated Feb 25, 2020 at 12:35PM EST by Matt.

Added Feb 24, 2020 at 04:46PM EST by Matt.

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About

"Mad" Mike Hughes was an American daredevil known in part for professing belief for the flat earth conspiracy theorist. He is known online for a series of self-built rockets, which he launched to prove the unsubstantiated hypothesis that the Earth was flat. In February 2020, he was killed in a rocket mishap.

History

Hughes came to public notoriety in 2002, when he jumped a Lincoln Town Car stretch limousine 103 feet. The stunt was the longest limousine ramp jump and was included in the Guinness Book of World Records.^[1]

In 2014, he built and flew his first rocket, piloting the craft more than 1,300 feet into the air in a little more than one minute. After landing, he collapsed and spent three days recovering.^[2]

Years later, in 2016, Hughes began professing belief in the Flat Earth conspiracy theory. While some questioned whether his beliefs were legitimate, it earned him the support of the community of conspiracy theories. On March 24th, 2018, he manned another rocket and successfully launched it more than 1,000 feet in an attempt to prove that the Earth was shaped like a frisbee.

Days later, footage of the launch was posted on the Inside Edition YouTube channel. The post received more than 2.6 million views (shown below, left).

On October 21st, 2018, he appeared for an interview on Tosh.0. The post received more than 2.1 million views in less than two years (shown below, right).

Death

On February 22nd, 2020, Hughes was killed in a rocket mishap. During the launch of a self-made, steam-powered rocket, Hughes' parachutes failed to deploy and he fell to earth. The fall killed him.^[5]

Reputation

Flat Earth Support

Hughes was known in part for professing flat Earth conspiracy theories and claimed that he would be continuing rocket stunts to see Earth from space."^[1]

In 2018, he told the Associated Press:^[3]

Do I believe the Earth is shaped like a Frisbee? I believe it is. Do I know for sure? No. That’s why I want to go up in space.

Darren Schuster, his publicist, later admitted that the flat Earth angle was a "PR stunt."^[4] He said:

We used flat Earth as a PR stunt. Period. He was a true daredevil decades before the latest round of rocket missions. Flat Earth allowed us to get so much publicity that we kept going! I know he didn’t believe in flat Earth and it was a shtick.