Skydiving

I've never parachuted.  My life isn't any emptier for it.

I read somewhere that in World War I the British air force didn't provide their pilots with parachutes because they wanted them to be motivated!

I remember when I was little reading about D.B. Cooper hijacking an airplane with a fake bomb, then parachuting out with a suitcase full of ransom money.  Neither he nor any of the money ever turned up again.  Even with his parachute, he probably didn't survive hitting the ground.

I remember this movie The Longest Day, about the D-Day invasion.  One character was a paratrooper played by Red Buttons.  He parachuted into France, but his chute got caught on a church steeple and he hung there helplessly for hours with this big battle going on around him.  When they finally got him down, he'd been left permanently deaf!  Somehow that got to me more than soldiers getting killed.