The Most Beautiful Suicide – Evelyn McHale leapt to her death from the Empire State Building, 1947

This powerful photo taken by Robert C. Wiles was published as a full-page image in the 12 May 1947 issue of Life Magazine. It ran with the caption: “At the bottom of the Empire State Building the body of Evelyn McHale reposes calmly in grotesque bier, her falling body punched into the top of a car”. Evelyn McHale is probably the most famous Empire State Building suicide victim. The young and prety Evelyn leaped from the 86th-floor observatory in 1947 and landed on the roof of a United Nations limousine parked on the street below. Her calmly elegant demeanor, her legs crossed at the ankles, the way the car’s metal folded like sheets and framed her head and arms—perhaps these were the reasons that McHale’s death was given its title as “the most beautiful suicide.” When she died, she was still wearing her pearls and white gloves.

Born September 20, 1923 and one of seven siblings, she was a child in Washington D.C. when McHale’s mother left the household and her parents divorced. Her father, a bank examiner, retained custody of all the children. After high school, McHale became a WAC, stationed in Jefferson, Missouri. She made her way to New York City where she worked as a bookkeeper and lived quietly with her brother and sister-law in Baldwin, Long Island. She met her fiancé Barry Rhodes, a Pennsylvania college student just discharged from the Air Force, and was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Rhodes’ younger brother.

On April 30, 1947, Evelyn took the train from New York to Easton to visit Barry for his 24th birthday. All seemed well between the couple, and the next day, Barry kissed his fiance goodbye as she boarded the 7:00 AM train to Penn Station. “When I kissed her goodbye, she was happy and as normal as any girl about to be married.” Their wedding was set to be held at Barry’s brother’s home in Troy, New York, that June.

Around 10:40 am Patrolman John Morrissey, directing traffic at Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, noticed a white scarf floating down from the upper floors of the building. Moments later he heard a crash and saw a crowd converge on 34th street. Evelyn had jumped, cleared the setbacks, and landed on the roof of a United Nations Assembly Cadillac limousine parked on 34th street, some 200 ft west of Fifth Ave.

A photography student across the street, Robert C. Wiles, heard the loud crash of her body hitting the metal, and ran over too. Fortuitously, he had his camera and took a photo of her as she lay on the roof of the crumpled car. It was snapped just four minutes after she died and, despite the 1050-foot fall (320 m), her body looked intact. Remarkably Evelyn shows absolutely no evidence of trauma and appears disarmingly placid and composed – as if asleep. Around her, however, the crumpled sheet metal and broken glass show the violent destructive evidence of her jump. This apparent juxtaposition is what makes Wiles’ image so arresting and memorable. Some 60 years later it remains a haunting and affecting piece of photo-journalism.

According to reports she essentially “fell apart” when they moved her body. Her insides were basically liquefied. Later, on the observation deck, Detective Frank Murray found her tan (or maybe gray, reports differ) cloth coat neatly folded over the observation deck wall, a brown make-up kit filled with family pictures and a black pocketbook with the note which read:

“I don’t want anyone in or out of my family to see any part of me. Could you destroy my body by cremation? I beg of you and my family – don’t have any service for me or remembrance for me. My fiance asked me to marry him in June. I don’t think I would make a good wife for anybody. He is much better off without me. Tell my father, I have too many of my mother’s tendencies.”

Her body was identified by her sister Helen Brenner and, according to her wishes, she was cremated. There is no grave.

Interesting fact:

Since the Empire State Building was constructed in 1931 some 36 people have jumped from the building, including 17 from the 86th floor observation deck. Evelyn was the 12th suicide from the building and the sixth to clear all of the setbacks. She was one of five people in a three week period to attempt suicide from the observation deck. In response a 10-ft wire mesh fence was installed and guards were trained to spot potential jumpers. After the barrier was installed people just jumped from other parts of the building, usually from office windows.
References:-

Ghosts and Ghouls

Japanese Bomb Explosion

In November 1944, fifty years before Predator drones swept on the scene, the Japanese military devised a low-tech method of dropping bombs on foreign soil that didn’t require pilots. All it took was balloons—specifically, 9,000 33-foot-diameter “balloon bombs,” or Fu-Gos, each carrying 35 pounds of explosives.

Released from Japanese shores, these balloons were designed to rise to 30,000 feet then ride the jet stream east, making their way toward the U.S. in about three days. At that point, an altimeter would trigger a reaction that would jettison the bombs, which would explode once they landed, whipping up fires and panic across the country.

That, at least, was the plan. The Japanese would soon learn that you should never place your hopes of winning a war in the hands of the wind. Only a few hundred of these balloons made it to the States, and even fewer exploded. Plus, apparently the Japanese hadn’t checked the weather: The balloons landed during a cold, damp winter, sparking only a few brush fires that didn’t do much damage. One balloon landing in Nevada was picked up by cowboys and turned into a hay tarp. In Montana, two lumberjacks stumbled across a balloon with Japanese markings and the undetonated bomb still attached. Seven fire balloons in total were turned in to the Army, and as sightings continued to pop up everywhere from Alaska to Texas to Iowa, Americans started wondering what was up.

In January 1945, Newsweek ran an article titled "Balloon Mystery." At that point, the U.S. Office of Censorship stepped in, asking that media outlets refrain from mentioning the balloons, lest this give the Japanese the impression their attack had been a success, which might encourage them to send more. So the media kept their mouths shut. The Japanese, figuring there was no way Americans could keep this big a secret, were forced to conclude that their balloons had failed, and discontinued their use. Nonetheless, Japanese propaganda broadcasts boasted that their balloons had caused huge fires, widespread mayhem, and death counts as high as 10,000.

Only one balloon bomb claimed any American lives, and it was more of a sad tragedy than a military triumph: Five kids and their pregnant Sunday school teacher, Elyse Mitchell, came across the balloon in Oregon during a picnic in the woods. As Mitchell’s husband explained, "[One of the kids] came over and told us that there was a white object near by. We went to investigate. It blew up and killed them all." Mrs. Mitchell, Joan Patzke (11), Dick Patzke (13), Eddie Engen (13), Jay Gifford (12), and Sherman Shoemaker (12) became the only World War II casualties in the continental U.S., although they were hardly the sort of PR coup that would buoy Japanese spirits.

After their death, the media blackout was lifted to make Americans aware of the threat. Parks were filled with posters depicting what the balloons looked like, and warnings to not mess with them.

At the end of the day, Japan’s balloon bombs boasted a kill rate of only .067 percent. It was a flop as far as secret weapons go, although the Japanese get points for creativity. And remnants of these balloon bombs still exist, with parts being found as recently as 1992. So if you spot a balloon in the woods, steer clear—and take a moment to appreciate the fact that you may be witnessing one of the best-kept secrets of World War II.

Sources:-

Japanese Balloon Bomb attack on the US

Source from wikipedia

Why we swing our arms when we walk

Why people swing their arms as they walk, a seemingly unnecessary movement for which researchers have tried to find an explanation.

The research, detailed today in theProceedings of the Royal Society B, used simple robots and human experiments to show that arm swinging is both easy and beneficial. The movement requires little muscular effort, yet it makes walking much easier.

“This puts to rest the theory that arm swinging is a vestigial relic from our quadrupedal ancestors,” said Steven Collins, a biomechanical engineer with the University of Michigan in the USA. “Instead, arm swinging is a sensible part of an economic gait on two legs.”

Walking machines

The 'passive dynamic walking machine' used in the experiments. Credit: University of Michigan

Collins first became interested in the role of arm swinging through his work with walking robots, which he uses to test ideas about human locomotion. He works with ‘passive dynamic machines’, which walk down a small incline without any power source, as well as robots that use motor-driven springs to push off the ground.

However, the first machines had trouble walking without arms, tending to spin and fall. When Collins and his colleagues added free-swinging arms to the machines, they moved in a way similar to human arms.

The researchers designed an experiment to determine the purpose of this arm swinging. They had 10 people use their arms in different ways as they walked: either swinging normally, held at their sides, bound to their sides or moving out of sync to the walking.

They measured the effort required from the shoulder muscles, as well as the effort of walking overall, which was quantified as metabolic cost.

Tendency to spin

The results showed that arm swinging, either normally or in the opposite direction, required little effort from the muscles. “Instead of being muscle-driven,” Collins said, “arm swinging appears to arise from the natural dynamics, or passive dynamics, of the body as it walks.”

The experiments also showed that keeping the arms steady increased the effort of walking by 12%, the equivalent of walking 20% faster or carrying a 10 kg backpack. When the arms were bound at the sides, not as much effort was needed, which suggests that holding the arms down requires more exertion that letting them swing.

But forcing the arms to swing out of sync increased the effort of walking even more. The researchers’ explanation, which they developed by observing the walking robots, is that this alternate movement makes legs work twice as hard to prevent your body from spinning.

Collins explained: “during a step your legs try to make your body spin about a vertical axis… in a motion resembling pirouetting ballerina.”

Swinging arms in the normal direction cancels this out, meaning leg muscles don’t have to counter the spinning tendency. However, swinging arms in the opposite direction doubles-up on the spin; as a result, your leg muscles must work twice as hard to keep from turning.

Collins hopes to use these findings about arm swinging to design more efficient walking robots. In addition, he said they could have future applications for physical therapy.

David Lloyd, director of the University of Western Australia’s Gait Laboratory, in Perth, said the paper “clearly shows what role the arms’ swing has in normal gait.”

He added that some neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and cerebral palsy, cause constrained or opposite arm motion. This abnormal movement negatively affects sufferers’ walking balance and energy expenditure.

Sources:-

Swing your arms while walking, or else!

I have a longing to connect

‘Being a child prodigy is inherently lonely,” Jodie Foster says. “I was one of them. You’re different from other kids. No one else can understand. There’s a longing to connect, a craving to say, ‘Here is the deepest part of me, the part that people don’t see.’”
Sitting in an elegant suite in a Beverly Hills hotel a short drive from her home, Jodie leans forward, her elbows on her knees, and speaks softly in her deep, boyish voice.
“When I look back at my life,” she tells me, “I think it has been about the search for meaning and connection.”

Jodie seems weary. Her lovely face is drawn, her blue eyes tired behind her glasses. Small (5 feet 3), thin and with very little makeup, she has none of the glamour expected of an A-list movie star. She’s dressed simply in tight jeans, ankle boots and a blue cardigan sweater pulled over a white blouse.

“I’ve been working for 42 years,” says Jodie, who’s now 45. “Sometimes I think, ‘What the hell are you doing? What’s the value of all this?’I have fantasies about the things I might have done. I wish I’d been a ski bum or maybe had a job at a Starbucks in a ski place.” She chuckles to herself. “Now I’ve got responsibilities, cars, kids…”

Jodie, who never married, has two sons: Charles Bernard Foster, 9, and Kit Bernard Foster, 6. She worries about them and the effect her life will have on them.

“I do what I can,” she says. “We try not to go out at night or go places where there’ll be 20 photographers. I try to minimize their exposure to assaults.”

The same goes for herself. She will not address long-standing rumors about her sexual orientation or name her sons’ father. When asked about her personal life, she fidgets and turns wary.

“I don’t think there is any good thing about fame,” she asserts. “In this business, in order to care for yourself and the people you love, you have to separate your professional life from your personal life. I have a work life that is at times fulfilling, at times mind-numbingly boring and totally trivial, with the hair, makeup, red carpet—but when it is 7 o’clock and I come home, that’s my life.”

Jodie first tasted celebrity as a kid in commercials, TV shows and Disney teen pictures. World stardom followed when director Martin Scorsese cast her as a teen prostitute opposite Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver. She was 13 and earned an Oscar nomination. In the following decades, she won Academy Awards as Best Actress for The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs. Her new movie, Nim’s Island, a delightful family comedy-adventure, opens on April 4. It is Jodie’s 43rd film and her first adult role in a picture made for children.

“Today I see kids at 10 who have this kind of internal light in them about acting,” she observes. “They want to put a lampshade on their heads. I was never like that. I grew up here in L.A. I sort of fell into acting.”

The dominant influence on Jodie was her mother, Evelyn “Brandy” Foster, now 79. “My parents divorced before I was born,” she says. “I’ve never really known my father. He lives somewhere in L.A. I’ve only met him a couple of times.”

When Jodie was 3, she landed her first job—a Coppertone commercial. From that point on, her mom became her manager.

“A parent’s love for her children is unconditional,” she says. “I don’t think the reverse is true. In some ways, my mother’s life was given meaning through me. She didn’t have my opportunities. I had to take care of her, and that pretty much meant I had to wake up and go to work.

“People ask me if I missed anything by not having a normal childhood.” She shrugs. “The truth is, if I’d been an ambassador’s daughter or grown up on a farm in Missouri, I wouldn’t have had a normal childhood either. I had the only childhood I knew.”

Jodie attended Yale. While she was there, John Hinckley Jr., an obsessed fan, shot President Reagan in a bid to impress her. Despite the resulting media frenzy, she graduated magna cum laude, with a B.A. in literature, in 1985. She was 23.

Following graduation, Jodie returned to California. “I got really depressed. I’d watch old movies until 2 a.m., wake up at noon. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. I couldn’t decide if I’d be OK being an actor anymore.”

Jodie considered changing occupations, but first she decided she would go after the leading role in The Accused—a gang-rape victim who seeks justice. “I thought the movie was a chance for me to figure out what I should do with my life. I’m drawn to films about people who live these lonely, heroic journeys. When I saw the first cut of the movie, I was like, ‘Oh, my God! I am so bad!’” she says. “I went straight out and took my GREs [graduate school entrance exams]. I was definitely going to grad school.”

Winning the Oscar as Best Actress for The Accused changed her mind.

Jodie has never admitted to any romantic involvements. When I ask why she has not yet fallen in love, she gets irritated and explains, perhaps disingenuously, “Oh, my life is basically from the head up. I’m definitely not proud of that. I’m very analytical.”

This past December, she opened the window slightly on her emotional commitments by publicly acknowledging her longtime friend, Cydney Bernard, at a Women in Entertainment breakfast in Los Angeles. Speaking about her, Jodie said: “My beautiful Cydney sticks with me through all the rotten and the bliss.” The middle name of both of Jodie’s sons is Bernard.

“I’m still not sure where I’m going in my life,” Jodie tells me. “There are times when I don’t really know what I am here for. When I had my kids, I was burnt out on the film business again and wondering if this new identity as a parent was going to be fulfilling enough. I was forced to ask these really hard questions about myself: Is being a mother everything? Are you supposed to lose yourself in the process of being a mother?

“I wanted to have children,” she continues, speaking intently. “I’ve always had a special connection with my boys. They are the center of my world. I wanted to love someone more than myself. What I realize now is the joy I feel in watching my boys become somebody—and also knowing that in time they will walk away. They will leave you, and when they do, you will tell yourself you’ve succeeded because they can fly away. They don’t need you anymore.”

She pauses, glancing out the hotel window as if looking for her sons.

“Now, of course, I am starting to see and understand how valuable it is for me to have an adult life apart from them,” she says quietly, as if to herself. “That’s important for kids to know. Otherwise you’re a burden.

“Most of all,” she adds, “I want my children to find connection and meaning, like I’ve found connection through them. I’ve found my own nuggets of meaning too. That’s what I am most proud of—that I’ve known those transcendent moments. I’ve had those quick realizations of connection that are impossible to explain. They fly away so fast! But isn’t it the hope of finding them again that keeps us moving?”

Updated:
via The celebrity facts
Her mother Evelyn Ella “Brandy” Almond and her father Lucius Fisher Foster III divorced three years before Jodie’s birth. Foster was a real estate broker and came from a wealthy background. He left his wife with three children – Cindy, Connie and Buddy. Jodie’s mother worked as a film producer in order to support her family. In 1962 Evelyn visited Lucius in order to ask him for child support and they ended up conceiving Jodie. The baby was born under the name Alicia Christian Foster but her siblings nicknamed her Jodie and later she started using the nickname officially.

Sources:

JODIE FOSTER

Jodie Foster