Garry Hoy

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Garry Hoy (died 1993) was a lawyer for the law firm of Holden Day Wilson in Toronto. Managing partner Peter Lauwers described him as "one of the best and the brightest".

Hoy became famous with a stunt he pulled in 1993, when he threw himself through the glass wall on the 24th floor of the Toronto-Dominion Centre in order to prove the glass was "unbreakable". He had apparently pulled this stunt many times in the past (bouncing against the glass, that is). On July 9, 1993, he was doing his trick for a group of summer interns when it all went wrong and he fell to his death.

In the words of Toronto police Detective Mike Stowell, "At this Friday night party, Mr. Hoy did it again and bounced off the glass the first time. However, he did it a second time and this time crashed right through the middle of the glass."

His firm tried to spin Hoy's stunt as a quasi-scientific investigation of the tensile strength of the window. This failed when people noticed that he had performed his 'experiment' during an after-hours party at which alcohol was being served to law students. Nobody accused Hoy of being drunk, and it seems likely that he was trying to show off for the interns.

Hoy's "experiment" has been recreated by MythBusters.