Food trolley saves air stewardess in 10km fall without parachute
January 26
In one of the most incredible aviation survival feats, a young air hostess survived a fall of 10km without a parachute when her plane exploded on January 26, 1972.
Vesna Vulovic, 22, was not scheduled to fly aboard Yugoslavia airline JAT flight 367 from Stockholm to Belgrade, with stopovers in Copenhagen and Zagreb. But she volunteered because she had never been to Denmark.
She joined the flight in Copenhagen shortly before disaster struck. Flight recorders aboard the aircraft showed that at 4.01pm on January 26, the plane dropped out of the sky.
No one has ever fallen from that high without a parachute and survived.
Vulovic became a national hero following her incredible survival story.
When a briefcase bomb detonated in the baggage department, it split the plane into several pieces, sucking the passengers and other flight crew out of the plane.
Vulovic was trapped in the cone of the aircraft's tail and landed on a slope in what was then rural Czechoslovakia after plunging 10,160m from the DC-9 aircraft. Crash investigators later found she had been pinned in the tail by a food trolley cart and this had saved her.
Following the crash, she was temporarily paralysed from the waist down and spent months recovering in hospital. Vulovic died in 2016.
The helicopter was heading from Orange County to a sports academy for a youth basketball game in which Bryant was to coach.
Crash investigators later found the pilot pushed the limits of bad weather flying rules, and became disoriented in the clouds and crashed into a hillside.
On January 26, 1998, then-US president Bill Clinton strongly rejected allegations that he had an affair with a 24-year-old former White House aide.
Clinton told a media conference: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms Lewinsky".
But in August, 1998, amid a congressional investigation, Clinton admitted to a grand jury he had conducted an affair with Lewinsky.
On January 26, 1788, the ships of the First Fleet all relocated from Botany Bay to Sydney Cove, where future Governor Arthur Phillip ran the British flag up a pole and laid unofficial claim to the Colony of New South Wales.
The date has since been marked as Australia Day, even thought it does not mark any European "discovery" of Australia, nor the arrival of the First Fleet.
But, as growing Invasion Day rallies show every year, it has become a painful date in history for many Australians, particularly the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
The largest gem-quality diamond ever found is uncovered in a mine in South Africa, on January 26, 1905.
The famous Cullinan, named after the mine's owner, was 3106 carats.
It was later cut into gems, some of which form part of the British Crown Jewels.
Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public display of a mechanical television system at a London laboratory on June 26, 1926.
The pioneering scientist later held a televised display between London and New York in 1928.
Baird was also the first person to show colour on a television.
Share a tip-off, video or photo with us
