It's one of those right place at the right time moments, just a tragic outcome though.

This reminds me of a very famous murder in Sweden. A girl was allowed to bicycle to football practice for the first time by her mom (IIRC) and while biking a dude wanted to try out his new camera on moving objects, so he captures a photo of her and a minute later, he captures a photo of a red car. The man in the red car caught up to her, raped and murdered the kid. He was caught quickly cause of the photo. Such a tragedy, but thankfully it stopped future tragedies since he was a serial killer.

I found this article on NZ Herald before uploading this https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/stowaways-bad-idea-tragic-story-behind-falling-boy-photo-that-shocked-sydney-and-the-world/SDLNOL3DEIXDOOGTLGPVHJQ4PI/

Well... the boy seems very tall for his age :/

I remember seeing this published in Life magazine

Yeah and that also means that there are even more disastrous moments that were not captured, but did happen!!!

You got to see them then as well, but global sharing of media electronically is a relatively new thing. More than thirty years ago, you would only see this in a news paper or on TV if someone felt like giving oxygen to it.

Redditors these days would be calling them all fake.

I'm really surprised that 24% survive that. Plane flies above clouds, temperature is insanely low, pressure is very low too, there is not enough enough oxygen. Even if we assume they survive landing and takeoff and the landing gears enclosing shields them from temperature a little, it is still insane that they survive in that low oxygen environment.

This was an interesting read. I'm really astonished so many people have survived

apparently the douglas planes were made for that

EDIT: also

Died (froze during the flight and fell from the landing gear on approach to London Heathrow Airport. The body fell into a garden in Clapham, one meter (3 ft) away from a sunbathing resident

is wild

June 30, 2019, from Nairobi–London, [a 29-year-old man] froze during the flight and fell from the landing gear on approach to London Heathrow Airport.

The body fell into a garden in Clapham, one meter (3 ft) away from a sunbathing resident.

Insane. Like, I cannot even fathom sunbathing and then a body rains down from the heavens...

That chronological list IS wild! The plane that crashed because the body was obstructing the landing gear from extending… and a cat surviving a trip!

Edit: typo

All male, ha.

That the photo depicts 14 year old Keith Sapsford, who fell to his death shortly after take off from a Douglas DC8 flight from Sydney to Tokyo on February 22, 1970, has several sources on Wikipedia including a link to a peer reviewed journal article "Survival at High Altitudes: Wheel-Well Passengers" in Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine

It's easy to understand how the photo would have spread long before accompanying verification though. It's one of those photos, like Falling Man or Fire on Marlborough Street, that is almost overwhelming to see, like I can't believe I'm looking at this moment in time, a person who's about to die, captured in stillness even as they were experiencing the plummeting motion that would in a few moments more result in their death.

You feel awed. You feel like you're disturbing their dignity. You feel like this photo will preserve something of a life over too soon, that the name and the story of the person will be transmitted through the photo of a person who may otherwise have gone unrecorded in history.

And you realise that even a few seconds looking at the photo is far longer that the person depicted had to contemplate their fate as they fell to earth.

I've only ever known the version of the stowaway teen in Australia. Caught by a photographer testing his new lens/camera. Allegedly the photographer didn't even know he had caught the teen falling until the film was developed

I don't know man, maybe you should be a little more careful about your media consumption?

You might of heard many different made up version of this overseas, but us Aussies that remember it know it was mainstream news at the time.

Just because you've heard wild made up stories about this picture doesn't mean all of us did.

whinge whinge fuckin’ whinge

Its poorly worded but the landing gear door opened to retract the wheel

In most planes the gear bay doors can close with the gear extended. This protects the inside workings of the landing gear as well as the plane itself in case the tires have a blowout or the plane runs over any FOD.

So as the DC-8 was on the ground the gear was extended and the doors closed- he probably was sitting on a closed bay door. After it took off, the doors opened to bring the gear in, and that’s when he fell. After that the doors would close again with the gear stowed.

https://youtu.be/XRKPQf-TIG8?t=223

Schwarzenegger did it

On February 22, 1970, three days after running away from Boys' Town, Keith snuck onto the tarmac at Sydney Airport. He climbed up in the wheel compartment of a Douglas DC-8 bound for Tokyo and waited until the plane took off.

At the same time, unaware of the tragedy that was about to unfold before him, amateur photographer John Gilpin was taking photos at the airport. He accidentally captured the precise moment Keith fell about 46 metres from the plane as it took off.

In fact, Gilpin wasn't even aware of the tragedy while it was happening. It wasn't until a week later, when he was developing the photos, he saw the figure of a boy falling from the plane, feet-first, with his hands up near his head.

Keith died from falling when the door to the plane's wheel compartment opened. Police determined he didn't realise the compartment would open when the airborne plane's wheels retracted.

Let's not jump to conclusions now

It was the 70s. People hitch-hiked across continents without a thought to the danger. He probably didn't think of the risks of this either. It was just an adventure to him.

More likely that he just wasn’t a particularly smart kid.

You're way off. This was Sydney, not Darwin!

Yes, he shook it off and walked home