23 Thrilling Facts About Adrenaline Sports Athletes

In 1897, 3 Swedes attempted to be the first people to reach the North Pole. They traveled by a hot air balloon but crashed after 65 hours. 33 years later, a ship discovered their camp, along with their dead bodies, journal, and camera. They'd survived for weeks by killing and eating polar bears.

A German woman named Ewa Wiśnierska was surprised by a thunderstorm while paragliding. She was sucked up by a cumulonimbus cloud to an altitude of 10 km (33,000 feet). She survived temperatures of -50°C and extreme oxygen deprivation at a height higher than the Mount Everest.

Anna Bagenholm survived the lowest body temperature ever recorded at 56.7°F (13.7°C). She had been skiing when she fell through a frozen stream and became stuck for 80 minutes. Despite being clinically dead, she made a full recovery and is now working at the same hospital that saved her life.

A mountaineer named Ricardo Peña found a wallet in the Andes mountain range. It was swung out of a plane, which crashed in 1972. Realizing the owner of the wallet (Eduardo Strauch) was one of the 16 survivors, he returned it to him, 32 years later.

In 1959, 9 experienced Russian hikers who were trying to cross the Dyatlov Pass mysteriously died in the freezing Ural Mountains after fleeing their tent. Most were in their underwear, 1 had a fractured skull and another had tongue and eyes missing. The circumstances around their death remain a mystery to this day.

While Erin Langworthy was bungee jumping 360 feet above the Zambezi river, the cord broke and she was forced to swim the raging waters with her feet tied together, at one point diving to free the rope from debris.

In 2011, two Nepali men named Babu Sunuwar and Lakpa Tsering Sherpa climbed Mount Everest and then proceeded to paraglide off of the summit, landing 35 km away. They then hiked and kayaked to the Bay of Bengal, winning the pair National Geographic Adventurers of the Year.

A 66-year-old hiker named Geraldine Largay became lost on the Appalachian Trail, kept a journal documenting her 26-day ordeal before succumbing to lack of food and exposure. She got lost when she left the trail to go to the bathroom. In one entry, she pleaded “When you find my body, please call my husband and daughter.”

The most G force a person has survived was in the 2003 Chevy 500 when the car driven by Kenny Bräck made contact with Tomas Scheckter's car. This immediately resulted in Bräck's car impacting the catch fence that would record a peak of 214 g meaning he weighed 30000 lbs for a few seconds.

A man named Rainer Schimpf was snorkeling off the coast of South Africa when an enormous Bryde's whale scooped him up in his mouth headfirst. The man felt pressure on his body but soon realized he was too big for the whale to swallow him whole which was "kind of an instant relief." The whale spat him out unharmed.