This Day in History
James Hiram Bedford (20 April 1893 – 12 January 1967)
He is the first person whose body was cryonically preserved (frozen) after legal death, and who remains cryopreserved.
To expedite matters, Cooper’s Life Extension Society, in June 1965, offered to freeze the first person free: "The Life Extension Society now has primitive facilities for emergency short term freezing and storing our friend the large homeotherm (man). LES offers to freeze free of charge the first person desirous and in need of cryogenic suspension."
Early on, there had been optimism. Robert Ettinger wrote in The Prospect of Immortality, "My own guess is that most of us will be frozen by nondamaging methods . . ."
Among those in the cryonics community, the anniversary of his cryonic preservation is celebrated as "Bedford Day".
