John Thompson Walks Home Armless
In January 1992, 18-year-old John Thompson was unloading feed on his family farm in North Dakota when his untucked shirt got caught up in spinning machinery and ripped both his arms off below the shoulders. He woke up in the yard with his dog licking his face, pushed himself upright against a tractor tire, then walked about 100 yards to the empty farmhouse, opened the door with his mouth, and dialed 911 by holding a pencil in his teeth before sitting in the bathtub so he would not bleed on his mom's new carpet.
A helicopter flew him and his severed arms to a Minneapolis area hospital, where surgeons spent hours reattaching them and then kept him in a coma for weeks while he battled massive blood loss and infection. After intensive rehabilitation, Thompson regained enough use of his reattached arms to live independently, work on his house, and function day-to-day more than 30 years after the accident.