“The next day Willig met with Mayor Abraham Beame, who settled for a fine of $1.10—a penny for each of the tower’s 110 stories.”

From “The Only Way to Go Is Up,” Sam Moses’ 1977 Sports Illustrated profile of George Willig, a Queens toy designer and mountain climber known as the “Human Fly,” who scaled the South Tower of the the World Trade Center that year:

“At 10:05 a.m., 3 1/2 hours after he began, admittedly very excited by now, but not tired, Willig lifted himself over a ledge at the top and crawled, feet first, into an inspection hatch on the roof. He was none the worse for wear, except for blistered hands and insteps. He was greeted by policemen, who congratulated him, requested his autograph, then handcuffed him and served him with a summons for disorderly conduct, criminal trespass and scaling a building without a permit. In addition, it was announced that the city was going to sue Willig for $250,000 for the trouble and expense he had put it to. The next day Willig met with Mayor Abraham Beame, who settled for a fine of $1.10—a penny for each of the tower’s 110 stories. In return, Willig readily agreed not to reveal the details of his climbing apparatus, to forestall imitators from attempting similar climbs.

Of course, Willig was asked why he did it. He responded with the expected answer, the classic and clichéd ‘Because it’s there’—which at the time was the easiest way to reply to a simple question that in truth has such a complex answer. Another reply might have been what Louis Armstrong said when asked to define jazz, ‘If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.’

Nonetheless, Thursday night, before he took his phone off the hook and went to bed at about 1 a.m., Willig tried again to answer the question. ‘A couple of times during the year I planned this climb I thought. ‘What the heck is in me that makes me want to do this?’ I guess it’s just a love of excitement and adventure, an appetite for action. Maybe it has a lot to do with asserting my life, just to myself—feeling more alive.

‘I did wonder, at times, if I should go through with it. But I never at all seriously considered not doing it, never from the first time I got the idea.'”