Morbid Fact Du Jour for February 22, 2015

Today’s Roiling Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The earliest known fatal misstep in Yosemite National Park occurred on May 20, 1913, when 21-year-old Austin Ramon Pohil hiked up to Snow Creek with three companions from the San Francisco Bay area. Late May, of course, is about as close as one can get to the statistical peak of Yosemite’s spring melt. On this day Snow Creek, tumbling down the Valley’s north wall toward Mirror Lake, was roaring.

Pohil was a “popular” student at the University of California. With social success often comes confidence, perhaps even over-confidence. Whether any connection exists between this and his next decision remains conjecture. Either way, Pohil tried to cross the swollen stream at the top of the waterfall.  He scrambled over a spray-drenched boulder and lost his footing on the slippery rock. Desperate, he struggled to regain his balance. He failed and fell more than 100 feet. Phil became Yosemite’s first known waterfall fatality.

Pohil’s comrades tried in vain for hours to locate him through the clouds of mist. Two days later, the Park’s Acting Superintendent Major T. L. Littlebrand ordered First Sergeant Louis Dorn, Troop A, First Cavalry, to find Pohil. Why Dorn? Because this incident occurred three years before Congress created the National Park Service, when Yosemite was still managed by the United States Army.

Dorn now instructed his troopers and Native American guides to lower him by rope to the pool below the falls. Courageously, the sergeant dived into the roiling water at the base of the hammering hundred-foot waterfall and somehow located the young man’s body.

Culled from: Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite

Morbid Mirth Du Jour!

An Important Public Service Announcement

Thanks to Abigail for the image.

Ghastly!  – Youthful Symmetry Edition

Today’s photo was sent in by Eleanor and culled from another recent edition to the Library Eclectica – Strange Days Dangerous Nights: Photos From the Speed Graphic Era.  Her description of it is perfect:

“It’s a particularly lovely one, don’t you think? The symmetry, their youthful, glossy hair and skin, the two of them so freshly dead, flesh and bone versus metal and glass…the sheer profligacy of it all! If there were gods, they obviously could never be sated by our sacrifices!”

Here’s the information about the photo from the book:

“The 1950s were a time of unparalleled highway carnage because of high-powered cars, overcrowded roads, and the lack of such rudimentary safety equipment as seat belts. Here is a startling photograph of Minnesota’s 71st and 72nd traffic fatalities of the year in 1957.

“Robert and Beverly Maalis were newlyweds from Minneapolis, he 31 and she just 18, on their way home in the early morning hours of February 17. She was behind the wheel, driving on Highway 36 in Roseville near the Hennepin County line.  In those days, the highway made a sharp curve as it passed over the tracks of the Minnesota Transfer Railroad. Mrs. Maalis missed the curve, and the car veered out of control before slamming into an abutment at an estimate speed of 70 miles an hour.

“Photographer Dick Magnuson, prowling the night, went to the scene and shot this picture of the couple, both dead, slumped over in the front seat almost as though sleeping. But the blood and the mangled car – note how the force of the impact wrenched the steering wheel out of position – leave no doubt as to what happened.”