When 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke boarded LANSA Flight 508 with her mother on Christmas Eve, 1971, she had no idea her life was about to become one of the most remarkable survival stories in history.
The Peruvian airliner was struck by lightning while flying over the dense Amazon rainforest, tearing apart midair and sending passengers plunging toward the jungle below. Against all odds, Koepcke survived the nearly two-mile fall strapped to her seat and later credited her survival to something her father had once told her.
