01 February 2008

I have kissed this face so many times...


... without knowing it was the face of a real girl. Thanks to Neatorama for telling the story of L'Inconnue de la Seine ("the unknown woman of the Seine"), whose body was pulled from the river in the late 1880s. Her beauty and her Mona Lisa-like smile prompted a pathologist to make a death mask of her face; copies were produced and became popular to such an extent that in this pre-Internet era she "went viral" and became the "erotic ideal of the period." (more details at Wiki).

In 1960 Asmund Laerdal, a Norwegian toymaker, used this face when he created a mannequin for the teaching of CPR. This is the face of Resusci Anne. And now you know the rest of the story.

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