Christopher Reeve was 42 years old and had the body the world associated with flying.
On May 27, 1995, he was competing in an equestrian event in Culpeper, Virginia, when his horse, Buck, suddenly stopped in front of a triple-bar jump. Reeve fell headfirst. He fractured his C1 and C2 vertebrae, his spinal cord was severed, and from that moment on, he could not move anything below his neck or breathe on his own. According to Infobae, doctors did not think he would survive.
A few days later, once he was awake, he told his wife, Dana Morosini, that he did not want to go on living, that he did not want to be a burden to anyone. She would not accept that goodbye. She replied that the man before her was still him and that she still loved him, according to accounts based on his memoirs. She stayed by his side.
Reeve lived another nine years. In 1999, he and Dana founded an organization to fund research into treatments for spinal cord injuries. He died on October 10, 2004, at the age of 52.