Edward Michael Grylls, nicknamed Bear, (born 7 June 1974) is a British adventurer, writer and television presenter. He is best known for his television series Born Survivor, known as Man vs. Wild in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. After leaving school, Grylls considered joining the Indian Army and spent a few months hiking in the Himalayan mountains of Sikkim and West Bengal, Assam. From 1994 to 1997, after passing United Kingdom Special Forces Selection, he served in the part-time United Kingdom Special Forces Reserve, with 21 Regiment Special Air Service, 21 SAS(R), as a trooper, survival instructor and Patrol Medic. He claims that he served in North Africa twice. In 1996, he suffered a freefall parachuting accident in Kenya. His canopy ripped at 1,600 feet (500 m), partially opening, causing him to fall and land on his parachute pack on his back, which partially crushed three vertebrae. Grylls later said: "I should have cut the main parachute and gone to the reserve but thought there was time to resolve the problem". According to his surgeon, Grylls came "within a whisker" of being paralysed for life and at first it was questionable whether he would ever walk again. Grylls spent the next 18 months in and out of military rehabilitation at Headley Court before being discharged and directing his efforts into trying to get well enough to fulfil his childhood dream of climbing Mount Everest. Grylls hosts a series titled Born Survivor: Bear Grylls for the British Channel 4 and broadcast as Man vs Wild in Australia, Canada and the U.S.A., and as Ultimate Survival on the Discovery Channel in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The series features Grylls dropped into inhospitable places, showing viewers how to survive. The show has featured stunts including Grylls climbing cliffs, parachuting from helicopters, balloons, and planes, paragliding, ice climbing, running through a forest fire, wading rapids, eating snakes, wrapping his urine-soaked t-shirt around his head to help stave off the desert heat, drinking urine saved in a rattlesnake skin, drinking fecal liquid from elephant dung, wrestling alligators, field dressing a camel carcass and drinking water from it, eating various "creepy crawlies", utilizing the corpse of a sheep as a sleeping bag and flotation device, and free climbing waterfalls. Grylls also regales the viewer with tales of adventurers stranded or killed in the wilderness. December 2008, Grylls suffered a broken shoulder while kite skiing across a stretch of ice during an independent expedition to climb a remote unclimbed peak in Antarctica. Travelling at speeds up to 50 km/h (30mph), a ski caught on the ice, launching him in the air and breaking his shoulder when he came down. [READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE]
wikisnaps.com is not affiliated with or endorsed by wikipedia. wikipedia and the wikipedia globe are registered trademarks of wikipedia.org. article content reproduced in compliance with wikepedia's copyright policy and gnu free documentation license