While the Austrian Baumgartner was preparing for his leap, Yeager was streaking through the skies above California's Mojave Desert in the backseat of an F-15 Eagle, according to the Associated Press. Yeager broke the sound barrier again at 10:24 a.m. Sunday, 65 years to the minute that he broke that barrier in 1947 and became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound.
Yeager is 89, according to the AP. He said he didn't know about Baumgartner's leap, in which the Austrian became the first person to break the sound barrier without the aid of a vehicle.
(Want to be terrified for a moment? Please enjoy this vertigo-inducing animated picture of Baumgartner's leap from 24 miles up, at the edge of space.)
Yeager, a hero of Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff," an Air Force test pilot and a Major General, originally broke the sound barrier in a Bell X-1 he named "Glamorious Glennis." In the days before his flight, Yeager broke several ribs while horse riding. Rather than admit his condition and risk being cut from the Mach 1 flight, Yeager went to an out-of-town veterinarian for treatment and told only his wife and his best friend.
Yeager piloted the F-15 Eagle during the take-off and landing on Sunday, according the AP.
Here is Baumgartner's jump, as recreated in LEGO: