. . . opened 74 years ago today. Vehicular traffic began the next day. Jumping off began three months later.
Read about the world’s leading location for suicide from a 2003 article in The New Yorker.
On the bridge, Baldwin counted to ten and stayed frozen. He counted to ten again, then vaulted over. “I still see my hands coming off the railing,” he said. As he crossed the chord in flight, Baldwin recalls, “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.”
Ken Baldwin, one of 26 known survivors
The Golden Gate Bridge had the longest suspension span in the world (4,200 feet) until 1964. It’s now ninth.