Plane Crash Facts

Ernest Hemingway survived two plane crashes in two days (1954), suffering a ruptured kidney, ruptured spleen, ruptured liver, crushed vertebra, and fractured skull. He also contracted anthrax and amoebic dysentery during his travels, and suffered from high blood pressure and liver disease later in life.

In 1971, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke's plane broke apart at 10,000 feet over the Amazon. She fell still strapped to her seat. Broken collarbone. Maggots in her wounds. She remembered one thing her father taught her: follow water downstream. She walked for 11 days and found a lumberjack camp. She was the sole survivor of 92.

In 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the frozen Potomac River in Washington. A rescue helicopter lowered a lifeline to the survivors clinging to the wreck. Passenger Arland Williams caught it and handed it to the stranger beside him. He did it again and again, each time to someone else. When the helicopter came back for him, he had slipped beneath the water. The bridge the plane struck now bears his name.

Lesly Mucutuy was 13 when her plane crashed deep in the Colombian Amazon. Her mother died four days later. Lesly kept her three younger siblings alive for 40 days - including an 11-month-old - feeding the baby formula from the wreck, then plain water. Soldiers found them 3 miles from the crash site.