80-Year-Old Skydiver Slips Out of Harness

Octogenarian skydiving won't exactly catch on after this video goes viral. Laverne Everett was celebrating birthday No. 80 with her first skydive when, at the last second, she became reluctant to jump, Huffington Post reports. The man going with her pushed Everett out, and the pair tumbled out over northern California—where she nearly came out of her harness. Her partner held on tight as the pair plummeted toward the Earth.

Much to everyone's relief, the chute did finally deploy. But you can see in the video that both skydivers needed comforting on the ground. “The upper harness came off, you know," Everett later told CBS. "Just slipped down, it was just the lower harness, is all I had.” The owner of the Parachute Center in Lodi, Calif., says everything worked "as advertised," but the FAA is investigating, and the center may be facing $900,000 in fines over unrelated incidents. (More skydiving stories.)