Extreme sports pioneer Felix Baumgartner, who once broke the world record for the highest skydive by jumping from the edge of space, has died in a paragliding accident in Italy.
The 56-year-old Austrian fell to the ground near the swimming pool of a hotel after apparently while flying over Porto Sant'Elpidio in Italy's central Marche region.
Porto Sant'Elpidio's mayor, Massimiliano Ciarpella, said reports suggested he may have suffered a sudden medical issue mid-air.
He offered the town's condolences for the death of "a symbol of courage and passion for extreme flights."
The Austrian made headlines around the world in October 2012 when, wearing a specially made suit, he jumped from a balloon 24 miles above Earth, becoming the first skydiver to break the sound barrier, typically measured at more than 690 mph.
He made the historic jump over Roswell, New Mexico, reaching a peak speed of over 833 mph, on the 65th anniversary of legendary American pilot Chuck Yeager's flight shattering the sound barrier on October 14, 1947.
"When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble, you do not think about of breaking records anymore, you do not think of about gaining scientific data. The only thing you want is to come back alive," he said after landing in the eastern New Mexico desert.
The self-styled "God of the Skies" started parachuting as a teenager before taking up the extreme sport of BASE jumping.
His long career of daredevil jumps included skydiving across the English Channel and parachuting off the Petronas Towers in Malaysia.
He performed the first-known base jump from the Christ the Reddemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
In Austria he was also known for courting controversy with views that included expressing support for dictatorship as a system of government.
Baumgartner was fined 1,500 euros after he punched a Greek truck driver in the face during a 2010 altercation that broke out in a traffic jam near Salzbur.
Fans have left tributes beneath one of the skydiver's final social media posts, a video of him working on the motor of his paraglider.
