On January 26, 1972, a young woman named Vesna Vulovic went to work. She was a flight attendant for JAT Yugoslav Airlines based in Beograd. That day, she was scheduled to fly from Stockholm to Beograd. It was a normal workday. She had done this job many times before. She had no idea that this flight would change her life forever.

The plane took off and climbed into the sky. It reached 33,000 feet. That is over six miles high. Everything seemed fine. The passengers sat in their seats. Some read books. Some talked to each other. Vesna and the other flight attendants served food and drinks.

Then, without warning, something terrible happened. A bomb exploded inside the plane. No one knows for sure who put the bomb there or why they did it. The explosion tore the plane into pieces. The pieces fell from the sky. Everyone on the plane died. Everyone except Vesna.

Vesna does not remember what happened next, but it appears that she was trapped in the plane’s tail section when it broke apart after the explosion and fell to earth, eventually landing on a steep, wooded hillside while still inside the wreckage. Hitting the ground should have killed her instantly. But something amazing happened.

The part of the plane that Vesna was in hit the side of a mountain. The mountain was covered with trees and snow. The trees helped to slow her fall. The snow was soft and deep. All of these things together saved her life. But she was still very badly hurt.

A man who lived near the mountain heard the explosion. He went outside to see what had made the noise. He found pieces of the plane everywhere. Then he found Vesna. She was not moving. He thought she was dead. But when he got closer, he saw that she was still breathing. He ran to get help.

Doctors came and took Vesna to the hospital. She had broken many bones in her body. Her legs were broken. Her back was broken. Her skull had a crack in it. She could not move. She stayed in the hospital for many months. The doctors did not know if she would ever walk again.

But Vesna was strong. She did not give up. Day after day, she worked to get better. The pain was terrible, but she kept trying. After many months, she could move a little bit. After a year, she could walk with help. After several years, she could walk on her own again.

What Vesna did was impossible. No one had ever survived a fall from that high before. No one has survived a fall from that high since then. The Guinness Book of World Records wrote her name in its book. She held the record for the highest fall without a parachute ever survived.

People asked Vesna many questions. How did it feel to fall? Was she scared? But Vesna could not answer. She did not remember anything. The last thing she remembered was being on the plane before the explosion. The next thing she remembered was waking up in the hospital. Everything in between was gone from her memory. Maybe this was good. Maybe it was better not to remember.

After she recovered, Vesna returned to work for the same airline. Many people thought this was very brave. How could she get on a plane again after what happened? But Vesna said she was not afraid. She said that lightning does not hit the same place twice.

After she recovered, Vesna wanted to return to work for the same airline. Many people thought this was very brave. But the airline company would not let her fly anymore. They gave her a desk job instead. She worked in an office, not on planes. She answered phones and helped with papers. It was safer, but it was not the same as flying.

Years later, people asked Vesna if she felt lucky or unlucky. She gave an interesting answer. She said she was lucky because she survived. But she was also unlucky because all of this happened to her in the first place. She lost many friends that day. She lived with pain in her body for the rest of her life.

Vesna Vulovic died in 2016. She was 66 years old. Her story is still hard to believe. Science cannot fully explain how she survived. It seems impossible. But it happened. She is proof that sometimes, in the strangest and rarest moments, impossible things can come true.