In 1900, the body of an unidentified young woman,
an apparent suicide, was pulled from the river Seine in Paris.
Enchanted by the mysterious corpse’s beauty, a morgue worker made a
plaster cast of the woman’s face. Copies of this “drowned Mona Lisa,”
as Camus would later describe her, soon proliferated across Paris,
appearing first in the city’s salons and finally in its literature.
Nabokov wrote a poem titled “L’Inconnue de la Seinne.” Rilke mentioned
her in his only novel. Man Ray photographed her. A character in Louis
Aragon’s novel Aurélien tries to resurrect her.In the The Savage God: A Study of Suicide, Al Alvarez writes, “I am told that a whole generation of German girls modeled their looks on her… the Inconnue became the erotic ideal of the period, as Bardot was for the 1950s.”
In 1958, the Inconnue was used as the model for the face of Rescue
Annie, a popular CPR training mannequin still in use today. Hers is
perhaps the most kissed face of all time.
--Athanasius Kircher Society
Here is the modern incarnation of L'inconnue -- Rescue Annie:
The photo is from Benovici.ch
1. It is an urban myth that it helps heart attack victims. It rarely does any good. Every nurse I have asked has told me she would never even try it.
2. It can be effective on drowning victims or people whose hearts have been stopped by an electric shock.
3. If you are going to try it, enroll in a new set of lessons. The recommended procedure has changed radically.
4. I would do it again even with my new found knowledge.
Either way it's a fascinating story.
click the 'T' below the photo for an explanation.
And I agree : you need training to do CPR. You'll never know when you'll need it. Contact the nearest firestation or Red Cross office!