17/10/2025
❤️ It’s Restart A Heart Month ❤️
Her face is serene, almost haunting — a half-smile frozen in time. Yet it’s a face that has helped save millions of lives.
This is the story of L’Inconnue de la Seine — the Unknown Woman of the Seine. In the late 1800s, a young woman was pulled from the River Seine in Paris. No one knew her name, but the calm, peaceful expression on her face moved a pathologist so deeply that he had a plaster cast made of her face — a death mask that would quietly become famous across Europe.
Decades later, in 1955, a Norwegian toymaker named Asmund Laerdal was creating the world’s first CPR training manikin. He wanted it to look real — gentle and lifelike. He remembered the face of the Unknown Woman that had hung in his grandparents’ home… and that’s how Resusci Anne was born.
So the young woman who drowned in the Seine became the face that has taught generations how to save lives — the face most of us have “rescued” during CPR training.
They say she’s the most kissed face in history. And maybe that’s true — but more importantly, she’s a reminder that even from tragedy, something profoundly life-giving can emerge. ❤️
