A familiar sight on television in the late 1960s and 1970s, colorful motorcycle stuntman Evel Knievel thrilled and delighted record crowds across the country and the world. With reckless abandon, Knievel attempted monumental motorcycle stunts that almost always ended with broken bones and serious injuries.

Robert Craig Knievel was born in Butte, Montana, on October 17, 1938. At age eight, Knievel witnessed the stunt show of Joey Chitwood's Auto Daredevils and a dream was born. It was also at this early age that Knievel began a sordid series of entanglements with the law that would continue for many years. An incredible athlete, Knievel won the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association Class A state ski jumping championship in 1957 and played professional ice hockey in North Carolina before starting, managing, and playing for his own semiprofessional ice hockey team, the Butte Bombers.

In the early 1960s, Knievel worked...