The unknown girl from the river Seine
In the early 20th century, the unidentified body of a young girl was pulled from the River Seine in Paris. An employee of the morgue was so entranced by the young girl’s ethereal smile that he made a plaster death mask of her, eternally capturing her blissful appearance. Copies were made and sold, and soon after, her death mask became a fashionable morbid fixture in Parisian Bohemian society and by the 20s and early 30s, copies could be found all over the European continent.
Generations later, the Girl from the River Seine would be rediscovered when Asmund S. Laerdal began the development of a realistic and effective training aid to teach mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. For this new life-extending device, he chose to fashion the mannequin after the eternally blissful face of L’Inconnue de la Seine. His new resuscitation training mannequin, Resusci Anne, became - and to this day remains - the standard face of CPR manikins. Hence, L’Inconnue de la Seine is the most kissed girl in the world.