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Comment by RyanMcGreal | Hacker News Reader

A few years ago, Paul McCartney performed at the White House. Toward the end of "Hey Jude", where there were a lot of people up on stage singing the "Na na na na..." part, McCartney accidentally knocked over a mic stand while crossing the stage back to his piano. Stevie Wonder, who was standing nearby, shot his hand out and caught the falling mic stand.

Here's a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3OC_mKo2Fk#t=341s

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Link to relevant place in video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3OC_mKo2Fk&t=341s

(Somewhere along the way the & in the parent's URL turned into #)

FYI it still works as a named anchor.

For interest, I have now tested Chrome, Safari and Firefox on my machine (OSX), and of those the named anchor only works in Firefox. Strange.

The named anchor works for me in Chrome 27, but I appreciate learning the query string parameter method too.

Interesting. I tested it in Firefox v.21 and Chrome v.27 (on Windows) and it works in both.

For what it's worth, it also works on Opera 12 for PC.

I'm actually not convinced that he's reaching out to catch the falling mic. To me it looks more like Paul McCartney is running by, touching him and he reaches out as a reaction to that touch. The mic then just happens to fall into his arm. But that's just my interpretation.

Also, a life music concert is incredibly loud. I think even for a trained man it would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to hear the falling microphone. I find the cane against curb example much more realistic.

On viewing the video your description is a little generous. He did hear it and put his hand out, but it would have fallen without help. Not really like the cane echo distancing.

Blinness is a spectrum, though. To be legally blind I don't think you have to have 0% vision in both eyes.

I'd be more inclined to believe Stevie has some residual vision, rather than he was using echo location.

He used his ears. Stevie Wonder's retinas are not attached to his optic nerve.

It's not echo location, though. It's far easier to pinpoint where a sound is coming from than to echo locate; sighted people can do it, too.

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