When I Fell from the Sky

She was 17-years-old on a Christmas Eve flight 40 years ago to join her father for Christmas when the unimaginable happened. The Lockheed L-188A Electra, on the way from Lima to Pu-callpa, flew directly into a thunderstorm. A strike of lightning left the plane incinerated and Juliane Diller (Koepcke) still strapped to her plane seat falling through the night air two miles above the Earth. Her survival is unexplainable and considered a modern day miracle. Her mother was among the 91 dead and Juliane the sole survivor. For eleven days she crawls and walks alone through the jungle, fighting for her survival again with hunger and despair her only companions as maggots eat their way into her wounds. Juliane ultimately survives and goes on to live an inspiring life as a scientist continually drawn back to the terrain that threatened to take her.