50 Years Ago, Philippe Petit Was a ‘Dot in the Sky’

Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll find out how the high-wire artist Philippe Petit plans to observe the 50th anniversary of his heart-stopping walk between the twin towers. We’ll also get details on changes to a gag order issued by the judge who presided over Donald Trump’s criminal trial.

Credit…Graham Dickie/The New York Times

“Don’t try anything funny, sir,” a security official in a pinstripe suit said, waving Philippe Petit through a turnstile in the lobby of 3 World Trade Center.

It was a joke. Petit was returning to the scene of what, 50 years ago, was a crime, or as close to the scene as he can get now.

On Aug. 7, 1974, he walked on a cable that had been strung — illicitly — between the World Trade Center towers. The New York Times said he combined “the cunning of a second-story man with the verve of an Evel Knievel,” promenading, prancing and pirouetting a quarter-mile above the ground. (The disorderly conduct and trespass charges were quickly dropped.)

Now Petit, the man in the 2008 Academy Award-winning documentary “Man on Wire,” was on an excursion into memory — the memory of a day when New York was consumed with his high stepping, or at least distracted from other news. The Times’s front page on Aug. 8 was dominated by articles about President Richard Nixon’s imminent resignation because of the Watergate scandal.