Vesna Vulovic was a Serbian flight attendant who holds the Guinness world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute: 10,160 m (33,330 ft; 6.31 mi). She was the sole survivor after a briefcase bomb exploded in the baggage compartment of JAT Flight 367 on 26 January 1972, causing it to crash near Srbská Kamenice, Czechoslovakia.

The Yugoslav authorities suspected that Croatian nationalists were to blame, but no one was ever arrested. Following the bombing, Vulović spent days in a coma and was hospitalised for several months. She suffered a fractured skull, three broken vertebrae, broken legs, broken ribs, and a fractured pelvis.

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These injuries resulted in her being temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. She made an almost complete recovery but continued to walk with a limp. The first thing she did upon waking was asked for a cigarette. Her recovery period was actually relatively short and incredibly successful – a fact she attributes to “a childhood diet that included chocolate, spinach, and fish oil.”

Many questions were asked of her and the main question was how she survived?

Due to her amnesia, Vesna Vulović had no memory of the crash or the explosion but Air safety investigators believe that Vulović’s position within the aircraft at the time of the explosion helped her survive the fall. She was in the rear of the plane with a food cart when the fuselage broke apart.

While many other passengers were sucked out of the plane after the explosion, Vulović became pinned by the cart. The small section she was in fell to the ground on a heavily wooded, snow-covered hillside. Vulović’s doctors concurred with the air investigators and added their own conclusions.

They claimed that the very thing that almost kept Vulović from being a flight attendant is what ultimately saved her life. Her physicians believe her low blood pressure kept her heart from bursting on impact with the mountainside.

Vesna passed away in the year 2016 at age 66. The unwanted Guinness World Record she had broken was presented to her by Paul McCartney.