Aeronautics were his whole life for ten brief years since he started flying dirigibles at 18 (1905).
By 23 he was a member of the Curtiss Exhibition Team and soon became their ace pilot, but left in 1913, when Curtiss refused to let him try doing the inside loop.

Beachey flew his dirigible around the Washington Monument in 1906 and landed on the U. S. Capitol steps in 1906. He made the world's first air mail delivery during an air show. In 1911 he set a world altitude record flying over Niagara falls and through its gorge. He discovered how to recover from a tailspin and was the first American to fly upside-down. He was the first pilot to achieve terminal velocity by flying straight toward the ground.
He dropped sound bombs on LA and dive-bombed the White House and Congress getting them to finally invest in aviation just in time for WWI. Here, in 1915, he was the first to fly inside a building - and he did it daily as the culmination of the Palace Of Machinery's exhibition of mankind's mechanical progress.
Lincoln Beachey was a superstar of his time. By some calculations every 6th American came to see him fly. Orville Wright said about him: "An aeroplane in the hands of Lincoln Beachey is poetry. His mastery is a thing of beauty to watch. He is the most wonderful flyer of all."

After two dozen of his friends died attempting to repeat his stunts Beachey briefly retired in 1913, but could not stay away from the air.
“I never will be killed flying,” he said “Only the careless or overly daring die in falls. I am too careful. Why, I am safer in my aeroplane than walking a busy street.”
He was wrong.

He had always done his famous Dip of Death maneuver where he would take his plane up to 5,000 feet and dive toward the ground at full speed, hands, outstretched, gripping the control stick only with his knees, in biplanes. But for the Panama Pacific Exhibition he built a special plane - the Beachey-Eaton Monoplane. Having only one set of wings it was not sturdy enough. The wings folded during the Dip and Beacheley plummeted down over 2,000 feet into the Bay.

Beachey's body was raised from the 40 foot depth to which it sunk and buried in Colma. It was San Francisco's largest public funeral to date, thousands lining along the streets to see him for the last time.
His glorious daring continues to inspire others even now, over a century after his death.