Steve Fossett rose to international fame in 2002, when, on his sixth try, he became the first person to circle the globe on a solo balloon flight. But that was just one of 115 records he set in both aviation and sailing.
Fossett also competed in an array of other adventure sports. He completed the Boston Marathon, the Ironman Triathlon, and the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. He swam the English Channel at age 41, and he scaled the highest peaks on six of the seven continents. A commodities broker, Fossett started his own trading firms, Marathon Securities and Lakota Trading, in the early 1980s. It was at those firms that he amassed the fortune that helped fund his many adventures.
As a Scout in Garden Grove, California, Fossett caught the adventure bug, climbing his first mountain at age 12. He became an Eagle Scout in 1957 at age 13 and later worked as a ranger at the Philmont Scout Ranch.
A longtime supporter of Scouting, Fossett became president of the National Eagle Scout Association in 2007. He was still serving as NESA president that September when he tragically died in a single-engine plane crash along the Nevada-California border.