Sole Survivor of '71 Jungle Crash Recounts Ordeal

The miraculous survival of a sole passenger in the Indian Ocean plane crash this week brought back some painful memories for German librarian Juliane Koepke, CNN reports. Koepke, then 17, was the sole survivor of a 1971 crash in the Amazon rainforest. She plummeted more than two miles strapped to a seat, and awoke the next day injured and alone deep in the Peruvian jungle.

The crash killed the other 95 people on board, including Koepke's mother, a famous zoologist. The pair had been en route to her father's Amazon research station. Koepke, using survival skills learned from her parents, followed creeks and rivers away from the crash site, sometimes wading through waters infested with crocodiles and piranhas. After 10 days the starving girl found a hut on the river and was rescued by lumberjacks.
(More plane crash stories.)