These people survived some harrowing stuff. What's most inspiring is what some of them did afterwards.
August 23, 2022
These people survived some harrowing stuff. What's most inspiring is what some of them did afterwards.
VIDEO: Sole Survivor of DC Lightning Strike Tells Her Story
Six bolts of lightning struck a group canvassing outside the White House within half a second, killing three people. Survivor Amber Escudero-Kontostathis says the lightning struck her through the ground and traveled through her body, resulting in significant burns on her body. [Good Morning America]
The Johnstown, Pennsylvania Flood Survivor Who Saved Millions
16-year-old Victor Heiser was the only person in his family to survive an 1889 dam break and flood that ravaged a town and killed 400 people. You’ll never guess what Victor did when he grew up.
No one ever imagines the game of hide and seek could be a matter of survival. But, for Scott O’Grady, that’s exactly what it became when he was shot down during the Bosnian War in 1995 as a part of the NATO forces enforcing the United Nations (UN) no-fly zone over Bosnia as a part of Operation Deny Flight.
What began as a simple search and rescue mission in World War II’s Pacific Theater became a 47-day fight for survival and subsequent imprisonment in two of Japan’s worst camps.
“On Christmas Eve 1971, Koepcke flew on LANSA Flight 508, which was struck by lightning. It began to disintegrate in midair, and Koepcke found herself still strapped to her seat—two miles above the Peruvian rain forest.” [Popular Mechanics]
“Sorry, no. It is too dangerous.” Those are the words greeting Hans-Peter Spitzner each time he approached a U.S. soldier in East Berlin. But, he did not give up and, finally, on his third day in the hot summer heat he found a soldier — Eric Yaw — who was willing to ferry his 7-year-old daughter and himself across the East/West Berlin border and into freedom.
“When Eric LeMarque set out for a day of snowboarding in the Sierra Nevada mountains in March 2003, he had no idea that by night's end he would be lost and moving farther away from safety by the minute. The former Olympic hockey player veered off course along the 11,000-foot (3,353-meter) Mammoth Mountain.” [How Stuff Works]
