luckiest person in the world...

Video Master Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 1815

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovic
Vesna Vulovic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (Redirected from Vesna Vulovic)
Vesna Vulovic (born 3rd January 1950) retains the Guinness Book of Records world record for the highest fall without a parachute: 10,160 meters (33,000 feet).

The fall occurred on January 26, 1972, over Srbská Kamenice in Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic). Émigré Croat terrorists (Usta?a) had placed a bomb on board JAT Yugoslav Flight 364. The explosion tore the DC-9-32 to pieces, but Vulovi? survived. She remained strapped into her flight attendant's seat in the tail section of the plane, which remained attached to the washrooms. The assembly struck the snow-covered flank of a mountain.

Strangely, the 22-year old wasn't even scheduled to be on that flight; she had been mixed up with another stewardess named Vesna.
Vulovic was the only survivor on the flight and not only lived to tell about it but continued working for JAT at a desk job following her full recovery from injuries which included a fractured skull, two broken legs and three broken vertebrae, one of which was crushed and left her temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. She regained the use of her legs only after several months of successive surgeries.

Vulovic was awarded the Guinness Record title at a ceremony by Paul McCartney. She later became a national hero in Yugoslavia in the 1970s.

Video Master Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 1815

http://www.avsec.com/asi/editorial/vesna.htm

Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2005 8:13 pm

I'd be drinking a lot of Zubrowka after that man!!!! Shocked

Team XLink Administrator Joined: 11 Nov 2004 Posts: 5024

The latest episode of the Discovery Channel show MythBusters had a segment on this... They don't doubt that it happened, but they showed more or less how lucky that flight attendant was. They also try to reenact the forces at work on their crash test dummy by strapping him into the tail section of an airplane and dropping it from a helicopter, with less favorable results.