When a plane disintegrates six miles in the air, there is almost no room left for hope. Yet every once in a while, history drops a story in our laps that leaves doctors, scientists, and the rest of us entirely speechless.
On a bitter, cold evening in January 1972, JAT Flight 367 cruised smoothly over the snowy mountains of Czechoslovakia on its way from Stockholm to Belgrade. In a split second, a midair explosion tore the airliner apart.
Of the 28 people on board, 27 lost their lives almost instantly. But as the smoking wreckage rained down onto the frozen slopes below, one person was still breathing. A 22-year-old Serbian flight attendant named Vesna Vulović had just survived a 33,000-foot freefall — completely without a parachute.
