6. Juliane Koepcke’s 2-Mile Plunge
If it were a work of fiction, the story of teenager Juliane Koepcke would be dismissed as ridiculously far-fetched. In 1971, the German 17-year old was aboard a flight above the Peruvian Amazon when it was struck by lightning. Koepcke plummeted 2 miles to earth, still strapped into her seat – and survived the fall. This, however, was only the start of her remarkable ordeal.
Juliane was the only survivor of the crash. She sustained only moderate injuries and spent the next 10 days searching for help as she navigated the crocodile and piranha-infested waters of the jungle. This is all the more remarkable considering she had lost her glasses and had ruptured a knee ligament. After searching through corpses for her mother and surviving on a mere bag of sweets, she was found in a hut by Peruvian lumberjacks, pulling maggots out of her infected lacerations and cleaning the wounds with kerosene.
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