3 Strange Events That Actually Happened

(RepublicanDaily.org) – Truth is stranger than fiction, but it’s because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t as written by Mark Twain in “Following the Equator: A Journey around the World.” As with so many other of his quips, Mr. Samuel Clemens seems to have hit the nail squarely on its head, considering these three examples that would have people throwing up their hands saying they were impossible if they were not recorded for posterity’s sake.

Even as recently as the 19th century, records show the law in Great Britain prohibited the act of divorce from ending one’s marriage unless one could secure a Private Act of Parliament. As with so many other things, if one has enough money, that could be bought. But, those without the cash seemed to be stuck until someone came up with the idea of a man selling his wife to the highest bidder. This became common between the 17th and 19th centuries.

On a less misogynistic note is the story of Vesna Vulović, a flight attendant for JAT Yugoslav Airlines in 1972. While 33,000+ feet over Czechoslovakia, the unthinkable happened — an explosion ripped the airplane apart. She lived and is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the person who survived the highest fall without a parachute.

Violet Jessop made her mark in history without ever going above sea level, having served as a stewardess and then a nurse aboard a trio of sister ships. She was aboard the luxury liner RMS Olympic when it collided with the HMS Hawke, a British warship, in 1910. She was also on the RMS Titanic when it infamously struck the iceberg two years later, and HMHS, His Majesty’s Hospital Ship, Britannic, when it hit a mine in 1916 and began to sink.

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