In the year 1912, Franz Reichelt, known (inaccurately) as the “Flying Tailor”, leaped from the Eiffel Tower to test a garment of his own invention: the “parachute coat.” Previously, Reichelt had seen mixed success when tossing parachute-clad dummies from his fifth-floor apartment, but believed that a higher platform would afford his invention better performance.
It was an icy February morning. Reichelt arrived by car, already clad in his parachute suit. The chief of police (seriously, click it) had approved the jump, thinking that Reichelt was planning to use dummies, not his HUMAN BODY.
- “Sa moustache a defie la gravite, son corps n’a pas.”
His friends—and even a guard—tried to dissuade him, but Reichelt was resolute, insisting, “Je veux tenter l’expérience moi-même et sans chiqué [sic], car je tiens à bien prouver la valeur de mon invention.”
At 8:22 am, observed by a crowd of about thirty journalists and curious onlookers, he readied himself—facing towards the Seine—on a stool placed on a restaurant table next to the interior guardrail of the tower’s first deck, a little more than 57 metres (187 ft) above the ground. After adjusting his apparatus with the assistance of his friends and checking the wind direction by throwing a piece of paper taken from a small book, he placed one foot on the guardrail, hesitated for about forty seconds, then leapt outwards. According to Le Figaro, he was calm and smiling just before he jumped. His parachute, which had seemed to be only half-open, folded around him almost immediately and he plummeted for a few seconds before crashing into the frozen soil at the foot of the tower.
Reichelt’s impact created a 5.9-inch depression in the icy ground. Sacré bleu.
Franz Reichelt: Death du Jour.
If you have the stomach for such things, you can watch video footage of Reichelt’s abrupt, mundane plummet—a heavy thing falling off a tall thing. It is utterly unflightlike.
OMG I want to be the boyfriend of that chief-of-police.
This is a great idea for a series, Lindy. Please keep it up.
What’s most bizarre is that they even thought to measure the depth of the impact.
@3, if you saw a dent like that after such an event, you’d measure it too, wouldn’t you?
For some reason this reminds me of the statue of Louis Aggasiz at Stanford that fell off its perch and imbedded itself headfirst in the concrete: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Agassi…
Because I am familiar with the Malheur wildlife refuge in Oregon, I had to throw the bottom-left caption at Google Translate:
“the hapless inventor dressed in his unit”
Too bad the poor sod didn’t live to see the Banff FIlm Festival and its regular inclusion of squirrel-suited (but parachute-equipped) bons vivants flying off alps, over cliffs, down fjords, etc.
His mustache is fabulous.
love.
@6 I was thinking of those guys, too! Wasn’t there one who died a year or two ago, went swooping into some narrow canyon, and Pasty Clined into the cliff face?
Sorry, Niehaus’ death is the notable death of the day.
Wow, the first base jumper?*
* Not the first successful base jumper. Obviously.
While I have a rudimentary understanding of written French,you should not assume that the typical SLOG reader can grasp the brilliance of your post without an English interpretation of a sentence that is all in the French language.
what is [sic] about sans chiqué?
Oh God that photo is great! I’m totally gonna use that.
I assume that photo of the Chief of Police was snapped seconds after Reichelt’s impact. I imagine he was thinking, “Huh. I wonder if that’s what he intended the whole time.”
A parachute not opening…that’s a way to die. Getting caught in the gears of a combine…having your nuts bit off by a Laplander, that’s the way I wanna go.
@9, I seem to remember one of the flying-suit people (I think it was a woman) was injured after her parachute failed to open fully, but she recovered and resumed the sport. I know BMFF does different playlists for different venues on the tour, though, so you might well have seen something I missed.
@13, Google Translate renders the whole sentence thusly:
I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to what he actually meant.