Cathy Newman

When Susan Potter died of pneumonia at the age of 87, she donated her body to the Visible Human Project so it could be sliced and photographed. The images would be digitized and used to create a virtual cadaver that medical students could use to dissect and reassemble with the stroke of a few keys.

The river is a lure for romantics, tourists, sunbathers, anglers, psychiatric patients—le tout Paris.

Most every morning at nine, the emergency responders assigned to the Seine pull on their wet suits and swim around the Île de la Cité. In the course of their circuit around this teardrop-shaped island in the middle of the river in the middle of Paris, the firemen-divers scour the bottom, retrieving bikes, cutlery (which they clean and use in the nearby houseboat where they live), cell phones, old coins, crucifixes, guns, and once, a museum-grade Roman clasp.

By the Pont des Arts, where lovers affix brass locks inscribed with their names (“Steve + Linda Pour la Vie”), they retrieve keys tossed in the water by couples hoping to affirm the eternal nature of their padlocked love. One bridge upriver, at the Pont Neuf, near the Palace of Justice law courts where divorces are decreed, they find wedding bands, discarded when eternal love turns out to be ephemeral.

Her eyes have captivated the world since she appeared on our cover in 1985. Now we can tell her story.