4 stories of people who survived against all odds

1. Ann Green: hanging

The Englishwoman Ann Green lived in Oxfordshire in the 17th century and worked servant in the home of Magistrate Thomas Reed. She, a 22-year-old girl, was seduced by the grandson of Sir Thomas Geoffrey, who was then 16 or 17 years old.

She became pregnant, although she did not realize her condition until she had a miscarriage at the seventeenth week. Ann tried to bury the remains of the fetus, but she was discovered. And suspected of infanticide.

Judge Thomas Reed personally prosecuted Greene under the 1624 law on the concealment of the birth of illegitimate children. It said that any woman who tried to cover up the death of her illegitimate child had killed him. Such is the presumption of guilt.

In general, on December 14, 1650, Anne Green was sentenced to death and hanged in Oxford Castle.

She spent almost half an hour in the loop. All this time, Ann's acquaintances clung to her legs and leaned with all their weight to stop the suffering of the doomed girl and help her die.

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Finally, the under sheriff, fearing that they would break the government rope, banned to do this and finished off Green himself with the butt of a musket - five blows.

Anne's body was handed over to Oxford University doctors for an autopsy. The next day, the doctors opened the box in which they brought the body, and found Green had a weak pulse and breathing. Doctors enthusiastically began resuscitation procedures, which included pouring into the patient's throat hot drinks, limb massage, bloodletting, chest poultices, and tobacco enema. smoke.

A month later, Ann Green fully recovered, although she did not remember the circumstances of her execution. The court considered that her salvation was a sign that the Lord himself recognized her as innocent. Taking into account the providence of God, as well as the fact that the plaintiff Thomas Reid died three days after Anne's execution, the case was reviewed, and Green received a pardon.

She left to the village with her relatives, taking with her as a keepsake the same wooden coffin in which she was placed after the execution. Ann Green married, had three children, and died in 1659 in an unsuccessful birth at the age of 37.

2. Roy Sullivan: Seven Thunderbolts

There is a belief that lightning does not strike twice in the same place. In fact, this is not true, which we already told. Moreover, lightning can strike the same person several times.

Roy Cleveland Sullivan was born in 1912 in Virginia. By his own storiesHe was struck by lightning for the first time when he was a small child. Then he helped his father mow wheat in the field, and the discharge hit the blade of his scythe directly, but, fortunately, Roy was not injured.

Nobody could confirm this case. But it is reliably known that later, between 1942 and 1977, when Sullivan was already an adult and worked as a ranger in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, lightning struck him got seven times.

In 1942, while Roy Sullivan was on the fire tower, lightning struck his leg, ripping off his thumbnail. In 1969, during a trip on a mountain road, Roy was again struck by lightning, which this time led to the loss of eyebrows. In 1970, on the lawn of his house, Roy received another blow, which led to an injury to his left shoulder and paralysis of his arm.

In 1972, on the territory of the administrative building of the forestry, Roy was again struck by lightning, due to which his hair caught fire. Since then he has always wore Carry a bottle of water with you to put out the fire. In August 1973, lightning again struck Roy in the head while he was driving through the woods. As a result, Sullivan was thrown out of the car, his hair caught fire again, and his legs were temporarily paralyzed. Also the shoes came off.

In June 1976, while on campsite duty, Roy was struck by lightning for the sixth time, causing a serious injury to his ankle. And a year later, when Roy went fishing, lightning struck him again, causing burns chest and abdomen. At the same time, there is also a bear on Sullivan attacked, trying to take away the caught trout. But a ranger with burning hair, distraught with pain, beat the clubfoot with a stick, and he ran away in a panic.

Because of his adventurous life, Roy was nicknamed the Lightning Man. But he wasn't happy about it.

People were wary of standing next to Sullivan, and for good reason. Once, his wife was also struck by lightning while she was hanging laundry in the backyard of their house. Roy recalled another such incident: “Once we were walking with the chief inspector in the park, and not far from us thunder rumbled. The inspector said, "Okay, Roy, let's meet later sometime." And left".

On the morning of September 28, 1983, at the age of 71, Roy Sullivan committed suicide, shooting in your head. According to the official version, the reason was unrequited love - he quarreled with his wife, who was 30 years younger than him.

Broken heart It turned out to be worse than a lightning strike.

3. Tsutomu Yamaguchi: two nuclear bombings

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was born on March 16, 1916. He worked as an engineer at the Mitsubishi shipyard in Hiroshima, where he designed oil tankers.

During the Second World War, the industry suffered greatly due to lack of resources and the sinking of tankers. Later Tsutomu toldthat he was so depressed by the state of his home country that he considered having to kill himself and his family if Japan was defeated. He considered this "seppuku" - a samurai duty of honor.

In the summer of 1945 the company sent 29-year-old engineer on a business trip to Hiroshima. He was already finishing his business and was about to leave the city when an American bomber dropped atomic bomb "Baby". Yamaguchi turned out to be only three kilometers from the center of the explosion. He suffered burns and serious injuries, his eardrums were torn, and he was temporarily blind. But survived.

Wounded and bandaged like a mummy, Yamaguchi nevertheless considered it his duty to return from Hiroshima to work at the company's headquarters in Nagasaki.

At 11 am on August 9, 1945, Yamaguchi told his boss about the explosion in Hiroshima, when an American bomber dropped the Fat Man atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The office was only three kilometers from the epicenter, but surprisingly, Tsutomo was not seriously injured here. However, the wounds he received did not heal for a long time, he suffered from high temperature and constant nausea for more than a week.

Tsutomo Yamaguchi died in 2010 at the age of 93. Late in life, he began to suffer from radiation-related illnesses, including cataracts and leukemia. His wife, also injured in the Nagasaki bombing, died in 2008 at age 88 from kidney and liver cancer.

After all the horrors experienced, Yamaguchi became and until the end of his life remained an ardent opponent of the war, calling all countries of the world towards nuclear disarmament.

4. Vesna Vulovich: the longest fall without a parachute in history

Serbian Vesna Vulovich worked as a flight attendant for Yugoslav Airlines. She chose this profession, because in her youth she visited London and Stockholm, but her parents forbade her to stay there. They decided that the daughter should live under their supervision, otherwise she would "get acquainted with sex and drugs." Therefore, Vesna returned to Belgrade and went into aviation in order to visit the cities she loved, at least in transit.

January 29, 1972 23-year-old Spring was on board JAT Yugoslav Airlines Flight 367 en route from Copenhagen to Belgrade. When the plane flew over the Czechoslovak village of Serbska Kamenica, an explosion thundered in the luggage compartment. Later, the Yugoslav authorities suspected Croatian nationalists of organizing a terrorist attack, who allegedly planted a briefcase with a bomb in their luggage. However, no one has ever been arrested in connection with this incident.

As it were, airplane in the air was torn to pieces, but Vulovich survived the explosion. At the time of the destruction of the cabin, 27 people - passengers and other crew members - were thrown out of the plane. They died. But Vesna ended up in the back of the fuselage, the exit from which was blocked by a food cart. This saved the flight attendant's life.

The tail of the aircraft crashed at an angle onto the wooded and snow-covered mountainside, softening the force of the impact.

Spring lost consciousness - and this saved her a second time.

Doctors who investigated the incident later determined that Vulović's low blood pressure had caused her to pass out after the depressurization. Otherwise, when she hit the ground, her heart would have ruptured.

spring discovered a local resident named Bruno Honke, who heard her screams in the rubble. The turquoise stewardess uniform was covered in blood, and her stiletto heels were knocked off her feet by the impact. Honke was a military doctor during World War II and he was able to keep Vulović alive until rescuers arrived.

Spring spent several days in a coma, as she received serious injuries, including fracture skull and cerebral hemorrhage. She broke both legs and three vertebrae, one of which was completely crushed. The pelvis and several ribs were also broken. These injuries resulted in temporary paralysis from the waist down. In addition, Vulovich lost her memory from the moment before the fall, and regained it only a month after the disaster. The first thing the flight attendant asked for when she woke up in the hospital was a cigarette.

After recovering, Vesna returned to normal. She hit in the Guinness Book of Records as surviving a fall from the highest height without a parachute - Vesna flew 10,160 m. Due to her amnesia, she did not remember the fear of a plane crash and tried to get a job as a flight attendant again. But in the end, she was transferred to work in the office of Yugoslav Airlines. Vesna lived for 66 years and died in 2016.