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.