Posted on 06/26/2009 8:34:04 PM PDT by Steelfish
Teenager jumps to her death from Eiffel Tower, crashing onto roof of packed restaurant 180ft below
IAN SPARKS
27th June 2009
A teenage tourist has leapt to her death from the Eiffel Tower in Paris and crashed onto the roof of a packed restaurant 180ft below.
The 18-year-old Brazilian girl jumped from a second-storey tier as her brother frantically tried to stop her.
Diners on the tower's 170ft-high first floor then heard her smash into the plastic roof of the restaurant, believed to be Altitude 95, five feet above their heads.
Altitude 95, on the first tier of the Eiffel Tower: Believed to be the restaurant which an 18-year-old crashed into after leaping to her death
A waiter said after the tragedy on Thursday afternoon: 'It was a shocking moment.
'The smashing noise was like a bomb going off as the roof cracked, then everyone there very quickly realised what had happened.
'But the most bizarre thing was, most of the customers just carried on eating. I have no idea why they did that.'
The Eiffel Tower: The Brazilian girl's brother desperately tried to stop her from jumping
Police said the girl's 25-year-old brother had frantically tried to stop her, but that she had jumped before he could reach her.
A spokesman added: 'He watched her leap over the railing and vanish.
'At this point we have no idea of what drove her to this tragic act.
'Her brother is in a state of extreme shock and has been taken to hospital for treatment.
'He was so horrified at what he saw that he could not even tell us his name.'
The victim could not be named until her family had been informed, he added.
The 980ft tower is the world's most popular attraction, visited by more than 6million tourists...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
She was experiencing 1 g of acceleration, not zero g.
Despite the mental problems pr serious depression that cause those that commit suicide have, I have to agree with you that it is sickeningly selfish. I knew a girl in the 80s who took a 38 to her head in her apartment. Her 7 yr. old son found her when he got home from school that day. Selfish b-—h.
‘But the most bizarre thing was, most of the customers just carried on eating. I have no idea why they did that.’
It’s possible many diners didn’t realize the crash had been caused by a person.
Nope. The popular genius has captured the truth very well with the expression “free fall”. Einstein promoted the idea to the fundamental Principle of Equivalence. Physically, there’s no difference between floating in intergalactic space, and dropping off a cliff. In each case there are no forces acting on you, and you are in “free fall”.
Perhaps they already paid. Maybe the food was good.
Was it the Jules Verne restaurant?
Fortunately the time I ate there, no one killed themselves.
I think there’s more than one restaurant on Le Tour Eiffel.
is it just me or does this have a tone like the fact she landed on a restaurant was more significant than the fact that she did away with herself?
a year.
An Eiffel Tower spokesman said increased security and netting had cut suicides from the tower to only four a year.
He added: 'Each suicide here is one death too many. We are all very distressed by what happened yesterday.'
‘But the most bizarre thing was, most of the customers just carried on eating. I have no idea why they did that.’
Bizarre? Hell. That’s outright coldhearted insane.
I have seen the mess this makes.... normal people would not be able to continue to eat.
Sad for the family.... dumb for the girl.
BTW, I would suppose that the reported feeling of “shocking acceleration” might be due to the visual sensation of the onrushing ground, perhaps, or a passing structure, depending on the circumstance. This is physically no different than the experience of diving into water from a height, of course, but the subjective experience depends on more than the physics of free fall.
I promise she was experiencing 1 g of acceleration.
The problem is “experiencing”. Her motion could be described by a 1g acceleration in the ground frame of reference, but objects in Low Earth Orbit can be described likewise, as they are also objects in “free fall” near the earth’s surface.
In an LEO environment, one is said to be “experiencing” zero g, and this is physically exactly the same experience as free fall in a “Very Low Earth Orbit”.
He pulled the trigger.In the prolonged sustained roar during the split second left him, Bloom felt as if somebody had stepped up behind him and grasped his chin and the base of his skull and lifted with both hands like a weightlifter doing a snatch lift. They kept lifting and lifting, his head was going higher and higher.
I dint mean it! he tried to yell. I take it back! I was ony kiddin! I was just showin off!
....
What a silly thing to do, he thought. What a goddam silly thing to do. You wont even be there to watch their faces.
— James Jones, From Here to Eternity.
“When there are natural disasters, such as during Katrina, the local Walmarts often provide a lot of free merchandise to the communities in trouble. “
I hate to tell you, but Walmart didn’t give away anything for free after Katrina. All they did was rake in the money.
Meanwhile many of the locally owned businesses gave away free services and restaurants gave away tens of thousands of free meals. One that I know of gave away over 70,000 free meals.
The suicide, as she is falling
Illuminated by the moon
Regrets her act, and finds appalling
The thought she will be dead so soon
-Edward Gorey, The Fatal Lozenge
At some instant she was, from the earth's frame of reference -- but as soon as her body's velocity toward earth increased, the drag from the viscous air molecules increased. At terminal velocity (probably never reached) the acceleration would have been zero g's.
Great pic! Reminds me of many other places I have no interest in ever seeing
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