The survivor of the longest non-fatal freefall
11–23–16, Brian
Alright boyos I’m gonna stick with my theme of hard-to-kill badasses. Today we’ll learn about Vesna Vulovic. Vesna holds the record for surviving the longest free fall without a parachute. At the time, she was a 22 year old flight attendant.
In 1972 a bomb went off in the luggage compartment of a plane she was working on while over Srbska Kamenice, Czechoslovakia. After the bomb went off, Vulovic and the rest of the passengers fell 33,333 feet. She was found alive pinned against the wall by a food cart with another flight attendant on top of her. She was the only surviver, but it cost her a fractured skull, 3 broken vertebrae, and two broken legs. She was in a coma for 27 days and was somehow only temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. She is now a political activist, using her fame from the crash to raise awareness. One such movement she was a leader of actually overthrew an Eastern European leader. Since the crash, there have been theories that the story is embellished, and was likely shot down by ground fire from a few hundred meters above ground, not 10,000. But we’ll go with the cooler story.
UPDATE: Vesna recently died on December 23, 2016 at the age of 66 of unknown (as of 1/30/17) causes.
