Tomorrow, October 13th. is the anniversary of one of history’s most famous plane crashes.
It was on October 13th, 1972 that a Uruguayan Air Force flight, chartered by a rugby team, crashed high up in the Andes mountains. Authorities tried for days to find the wreckage, but ultimately they gave up, unaware that there were survivors.
For 72 days, they did what they had to do to survive — including, unthinkably, feeding themselves by eating companions who had died in the crash.
In the end, only sixteen people came down from the mountain, including 22-year-old rugby player Nando Parrado.
Their story was told in the book and movie “Alive!” Ethan Hawke played Nando Parrado.
I met Nando Parrado 34 years after that crash, when he wrote a book called “Miracle in the Andes.”
So here now, from 2006, Nando Parrado:
Nando Parrado will be 71 in December. He is a businessman, TV personality in Uruguay, and mmotivational speaker.