15 Insane Things People Actually Lived Through
Nathan Johnson
Published
10/07/2015
You won’t believe how and what these people survived.
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1.
Alcides Moreno and his brother Edgar were window washers in Manhattan. In December 2007, their rig plummeted 47 stories, about 500 feet, into an alleyway. Edgar was killed, but Alcides was found by firemen alive, conscious and sitting upright. He did suffer fractured ribs, broken limbs and injured his spine and brain, but he recovered almost completely by June when doctors thought it would take at least be a year. Needless to say, he doesn’t wash windows anymore. -
2.
Guzman-McMillan was working on the 64th floor of the North Tower when it was hit by American Airline Flight 11. Eventually, Guzman-McMillan made her way into the stairwell and made it down to the 13th floor when she stopped to remove her shoe. A wall collapsed on her as the building collapsed, and she was pinned with the only thing she could move -- her left hand. She waited 27 hours before being rescued, and was the last person pulled from the wreckage alive. -
3.
Lim was a crewman on the British merchant ship SS Benlomond when it was sunk by a German U-boat in November 1942, 750 miles off the coast of South America. The ship sank in two minutes and Lim was the only survivor. He found a raft two hours after landing in the water. The raft had a few biscuits, a jug of water, chocolate, sugar, flares, smoke pots and a flashlight. He resorted to catching rain water and fishing to survive. He was picked up by Brazilian fishermen 133 days after hitting the water, and holds the record for the most days at sea in a life raft. He died in 1991. -
4.
In 1942, Park Ranger Sullivan was struck by lightning for the first time, and it knocked his big toenail off. In 1969, he was struck a second time, which knocked him out and claimed his eyebrows. In 1970, he was struck a third time and burned his shoulder. A fourth strike in 1972 set his hair on fire. A fifth strike in 1973 knocked his hat off and set his hair on fire again, tossing him out of his truck and knocking his left shoe off. A sixth strike in 1976 injured his ankle. The seventh hit gave him chest and stomach burns. His wife was also struck once when she and Roy were out hanging their laundry. He reportedly took his own life in 1983 over issues not related to his lightning strikes. -
5.
Bagenholm was skiing on a trail in Norway when she lost her balance and fell headfirst into an icy river. Her head and body got stuck under the ice, but she found an air pocket which allowed her to breathe. She spent over an hour and a half under the ice before being freed. Her body temperature went from 98.6 to just 57 degrees. Her vital signs were so low she could be considered dead. Doctors pumped her blood through a special machine that warmed it before returning it to her body. She made a full recovery, but had a persistent tingling sensation in her hands. -
6.
On Feb. 4, 1963, the plane piloted by Flores with Klaben as a passenger crashed in the remote Canadian wilderness. Both suffered broken bones among other injuries, but survived the crash. The problem was that they were in the middle of the frozen Canadian wilderness with only four cans of sardines, two cans of tuna, two cans of fruit cocktail and some vitamin pills. Temperatures dropped to 42 below zero. They made a blanket out of the carpet on the plane, used clothes and spruce boughs to insulate the wreckage, and took gas from the plane to make a fire. Their food was gone in a week, so they only had snow to eat. They survived another 42 days before they were spotted and rescued. If they hadn’t been overweight, they probably would have died. -
7.
By now I am sure you have heard of the movie ‘Unbroken.’ That is Zamperini’s story. He was a B-24 crew member whose plane crashed in the Pacific Ocean. He and two other men survived the crash and spent weeks floating in rubber rafts beating back sharks and trying to stay alive. A Japanese bomber strafed them several times and even tried bombing them. After 33 days, one of the crew died and was buried at sea. After the 47th day, Zamperini and the other survivor were captured by the Japanese. He lived only because he was an Olympic athlete. He spent over two years as a prisoner of the Japanese, receiving daily beatings and was threatened with death every day. -
8.
In 1978, Bugorski was working on the largest particle beam accelerator in the Soviet Union. The device started malfunctioning and Bugorski went to fix it. The safety mechanisms failed and the beam shot through his head. He reported seeing a light brighter than a thousand suns, but felt no pain. The beam was measured at 200,000 rads as it entered his skull and 300,000 as it left. Usually, about 500 to 600 rads is enough to kill someone. He should have died, but instead lost hearing in his left ear and had the left side of his face frozen because of nerve damage. It doesn’t even age. He also suffers from mal seizures from time to time along with fatigue, but he completed his Ph.D. and went on to work like everyone else. -
9.
Bakari was a passenger on the ill-fated Yemenia Flight 626 that plunged into the Indian Ocean. She was ejected from the plane and suffered several injuries, including a broken collarbone and fractured pelvis. She clung to a piece of wreckage to stay afloat. She was in the waters for nine hours, and claims to have heard other voices that eventually faded away. She is the only survivor of that flight of 152 passengers. -
10.
Finkbonner was playing basketball when he suffered a split lip from being pushed into the hoop base. The deadly flesh-eating bacteria Strep A entered through the wound and began to basically eat Jake’s face. Patients usually die soon after diagnosis of the flesh-eating bacteria, but Jake managed to pull through and survive despite having his last rites read to him. His family credits the prayers to Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk who converted to Catholicism as Jake is half Native American. -
11.
Magee was a ball turret gunner on a B-17 when it was damaged by flak and from enemy aircraft. The plane started to go down and Magee went for his parachute, which was ruined. So instead of going down with his aircraft, he jumped out of the spinning plane from about 22,000 feet. On the way down, Magee lost consciousness and plummeted through the Nazaire train station’s glass skylight. He suffered from 28 wounds from shrapnel, including to his lung and kidney. He broke several bones and almost had his right arm completely ripped off. He survived and lived until 2004. -
12.
On his fourth attempt to collect a $1 million prize for circumnavigating the world in a helium balloon, Fossett ran into bad weather. Bad weather and helium balloons don’t mix. He tried to get above the storm front, but couldn’t get the altitude. Hail ripped his balloon apart and his capsule plunged to earth. The capsule slammed into the Coral Sea, but Fossett emerged unhurt. He grabbed a life raft and spent 10 hours at sea until he was rescued. -
13.
Truman Duncan was a railroad switchman. He fell off the front a moving train, was swept under the wheels and cut in two. He lost both legs and a kidney, but he stayed conscious and whipped out his cell phone to call 9-1-1. He waited 45 minutes, survived and went on to have 23 surgeries. -
14.
Selak is either really lucky or always finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. In 1962, Selak survived a train crash that killed 17 passengers. He suffered a broken arm and cuts and bruises. in 1963, Selak decided to fly. A door blew off his plane, and he was blown out of the plane. He landed in a haystack and woke up a few days later in a hospital. In 1966, sick of flying and riding a train, Selak took a bus. That bus crashed into a river and four people died. In 1970, Selak gave up public transportation and was driving himself when his car caught fire and exploded. He jumped just before the car blew up. In 1973, his other car caught fire and blew fire through the vents. Selak lost his hair. In 1995, he was hit by a bus but suffered only minor injuries. In 1996, he drove off the road to escape getting into an accident with a truck. He crashed through the guardrail, landed on a tree, only to watch his car blow up 300 feet below him. In 2003, he won a million-dollar Croatian lottery. -
15.
On January 26, 1972 a DC-9 from Yugoslav Airlines left Copenhagen and headed to Belgrade with 28 passengers and crew. A bomb, planted by the Ustashe Croatian separatist group, went off in the cargo section at 33,000 feet. Vulovic was blown from the plane and ended up sitting on its tail, which she rode all the way down. She suffered a fractured skull, two broken legs and three broken vertebrae, and was paralyzed from the waist down. However, after spending months in the hospital and having several operations, she regained the ability to walk. She is listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as having survived the longest fall without a parachute.
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