Vesna Vulovic Survives DC-9 Bombing
In the late 1960s, a woman named Vesna Vulovic drank strong coffee before her interviewer measured her blood pressure, hoping to push it high enough to qualify as a flight attendant despite naturally low readings. On January 26, 1972, she worked aboard JAT Flight 367 when a bomb exploded on the DC-9 at cruising altitude over Czechoslovakia, blowing the plane apart and killing everyone on board except her.
Rescuers later found Vesna pinned by a food cart inside a section of the tail that had slammed into a snowy, forested hillside, and doctors suggested her naturally low blood pressure and immediate deep unconsciousness might have helped her survive the fall. She spent months recovering from skull fractures, broken legs, and spinal injuries, but she eventually walked again and became a symbol of miraculous survival.