J D Salinger - Sylvia Plath - Jean Cocteau - Boris Pasternak - Unfolding Universe TV - Brian Cox TV - Collateral 2004 - William Shakespeare - Game of Thrones TV - La Haine 1995 - The Parachute Murder Plot TV - The UnXplained with William Shatner TV - The Fall: Skydive Murder Plot TV - Unsolved Mysteries 2024 TV -
This fall I think you're riding for – it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started. J D Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Life is a horizontal fall. Jean Cocteau, Opium
I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn’t of much value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them. Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
Albert Einstein realised that a man in the emptiness of space would not be able to detect whether he was falling under gravity. Einstein called this a happy idea. But in 1960, five years after Einstein’s death, Joe Kittinger made the idea a reality. He was part of a US Air Force team studying the effects of high altitude on the human body. He never achieved the fame of Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong, but to all intents and purposes Joe Kittinger was the first man in space. Three hours after lift-off his balloon was thirty kilometres above the Earth, three times higher than a jet airliner. And then, carrying a film camera, Kittinger did something amazing: he jumped. High above the clouds in the incredibly thin air Kittinger had no sense of falling ... Kittinger was the first man to reach the speed of sound without an aircraft. Unfolding Universe, 2002
Everything in the universe is falling through Space/Time. Brian Cox, Wonders of the Universe 3/4: Falling, BBC 2011
He fell from up there on the motherfucking cab. Shit. I think he’s dead. Collateral 2004 starring Tom Cruise & Jamie Foxx & Jason Statham & Jada Pinkett Smith & Mark Ruffalo & Peter Berg & Bruce McGill & Irma P Hall & Barry Shabaka Henley & Richard T Jones et al, director Michael Mann, cab driver
O what a fall was there. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar III ii 188, Antony
It’s fascinating what happens to bodies when they hit the rocks from such a height. The impact breaks them right apart. Like eggs dropped on the floor. Sometimes pieces remain intact. You’ll find the head sitting on its own. Every hair in place. Blue eyes staring at nothing. Game of Thrones s4e7: Mockingbird, Lysa Arryn, HBO 2014
How you fall doesn’t matter. It’s how you land. La Haine 1995 starring Vincent Cassel & Hubert Kounde & said Taghmaoui & Marc Duret & Abdel Ahmed Ghili & Francois Levantal & Tadek Lokcinski & Solo & Heloise Rauth & Choukri Gabteni & Benoit Magimel et al, director Mathieu Kassovitz, closing commentary
Three years ago, mother of two, Victoria Cilliers, took her 2650th parachute jump. A gift from her husband Emile. But her chute catastrophically failed. And she hit the ground causing life-threatening injuries. Detectives eventually discovered the awful truth. Shockingly, the police learned her husband had tried to kill her before … This is the extraordinary story of the Parachute Murder Plot. The Parachute Murder Plot, ITV 2018
Their marriage was far from a fairy tale. ibid.
Emile’s candid revelations handed police a clear motive. ibid.
She had just told the police of a gas leak six days earlier that could have killed her and her young children while Emile was away at barracks. ibid.
Against the odds, the two men survive a fall of nearly three miles … a miraculous recovery. The UnXplained with William Shatner s1e8, History 2021
I Survived Skydiving After My Parachute Failed: Brad Guy jumped out of a plane at 15,000 feet and hit the ground at 50 mph. ibid. Online article Patrick Heardman 30 January 2018
That Sunday morning I could hear the aircraft; I could even hear her parachutes opening. And then the next thing, the drop zone controller screams on the tannoy … I’d sprinted across and I saw her lying there … It’s just a corpse. The Fall: Skydive Murder Plot I, club secretary, Channel 4 2024
This is the true story of a woman who was supposed to die. ibid. caption
[missing slinks] That means it’s more likely to have been tampered with. ibid. unravelling of parachute
Almost picture-perfect marriage, lovely lifestyle. ibid. rozzer
He never asked for a solicitor and he never stopped speaking. ibid. rozzer
I suppose you should know about the gas leak. ibid. Victoria to rozzer
I know that he was going to leave her, didn’t want to be the marriage, and had a serious relationship with another lady. The Fall: Skydive Murder Plot II
A different phone, different computer, a whole other life. ibid. Victoria re Emile
If we thought he was dodgy before, he’s definitely dodgy now. ibid. rozzer
A very callous and calculating man … a narcissistic psychopath. ibid.
The hardest bit was the lack of concrete evidence. ibid. Victoria
Almost like he’s trying to make your life into a movie. The Fall: Skydive Murder Plot III, previous partner
I wanted my original husband back. ibid. Victoria
We knew we had to call Victoria again [retrial] so we prepared for it. ibid.
I don’t know why he [Rey Rivera] disappeared. When they said it was suicide I was, like, he ran out of the house like he was late for something. Unsolved Mysteries s1e1: Mystery on the Rooftop, wife, Netflix 2024
After the car was located all these folks started to organize these kind of searches in that area around the car. The next big thing that happened is that someone discovered this hole in the roof of the Belvedere Hotel. ibid. Jayne
Rey’s autopsy – it was some brutal reading. Multiple, multiple ribs fractured, punctured lungs, contusions and abrasions to the chest and torso, clavicle fracture, puncture of the sternum … fractures to the base of the skull, open fracture of the tibia and fibula, protrusion of bone … ibid. rozzer
This guy just ends up dropping out of the sky, and ending up in a conference room, and no-one knows anything? ibid. journalist
Two weeks before he died there was something that was worrying him. ibid. wife