Wall Street Journal - Eye of the Storm: One Journey Through Desperation and Chaos
By John Bussey
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
Updated September 12, 2001 2:36 pm ET
NEW YORK -- If there's only one sight I'll remember from the destruction of the World Trade Center, it is the flight of desperation -- a headlong leap from the top-most floors by those who chose a different death than the choking smoke and flame. Some fell swinging their arms and legs, looking down as the street came up at them. Others fell on their backs, peering upward toward the flames and sky. They dropped like deadweight, several seconds, hopeless and unhelpable.
And always the same end. Some crashed into the plastic awning over the entrance to the North Tower. Others hit a retaining wall. Still others landed on lampposts and shrubbery. After the 80-floor drop, the impact left small puffs of pink and red vapor drifting at ground level. Firefighters arriving on the scene ran for cover.
"Darwin was the first to use data from nature to convince people that evolution is true, and his idea of natural selection was truly novel. It testifies to his genius that the concept of natural theology, accepted by most educated Westerners before 1859, was vanquished within only a few years by a single five-hundred-page book. On the Origin of Species turned the mysteries of life's diversity from mythology into genuine science." -- Jerry Coyne
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