5 Famous People Who Survived S**t That Should've Killed Them

Ewert lured Glock into a parking garage in Luxembourg and told his business partner to "check out that cool sports car," because he got his supervillain manual mixed up with a Scooby-Doo script. But hey, it worked: As Glock bent over, Spartacus The Hitman jumped out -- hopefully wearing nothing but a leather thong and a murderous grin -- and started beating Glock on the head with a heavy rubber mallet. Which is an ... interesting choice for a murder weapon?

No, all violence in Luxembourg doesn't have to meet a mandatory silliness minimum -- the mallet was supposed to make his death look like an accident, like the elderly septuagenarian had fallen and cracked his head open. On ... a ... rubber mallet.

But after being bashed seven times in the head, Glock managed to wrestle the hammer away from the hitman/pro-wrestler, punched him in the eye, knocked out several of his teeth, and rendered him unconscious. Ewert had already run away like a coward at that point, which isn't a judgment call on our part: Ewert himself described the situation by saying "I am a coward."

The physical fight was over, but Glock wasn't done. Even though he had lost a liter of blood, he kept his composure, and the first thing he did after getting to the hospital was take his assets out Ewert's hands. Luxembourg gave Ewert and the hitman 20-year and 17-year sentences, respectively, for attempted murder. And a round of reluctant applause for the most hilarious assassination attempt this side of Cuba.

Wonder suffered a severe brain contusion and was rushed to the hospital, where he was in a coma for five days. Because life wasn't hard enough for a blind, black musician in a should-be-fatal car accident, Wonder briefly lost his sense of smell as well. Plus he had nasty headaches for a while, which is really quite understandable after you headbutt a logging truck out of the air.

On February 1, 1991, Koch was aboard USAir Flight 1493 when it collided with SkyWest Flight 5569, five seconds after landing at LAX. The Skywest plane exploded, instantly killing everyone onboard, while Flight 1493 spun off the runway, crashed into a utility building, and burst into flames. Nearly everyone in the back of the USAir flight escaped without serious injury. Koch was in the front. Here's a diagram to explain why that sucked:

Yes, Koch was the only first class passenger to survive the crash. After the plane came to its fiery, concrete-assisted stop, Koch ran toward the back of the plane and found a horde of people crowding an emergency exit. Realizing there wasn't enough time to wait in line, Koch ran back to the mangled front of the plane and blindly jumped out through a burning hole. He hit the ground, and crawled away, right through the fire. Koch's lungs were burned from the inside, and he was in intensive care for several days, but on the bright side, it wasn't the worst thing to happen to him that year. No, that would be the cancer diagnosis.

Later that year, Koch was almost done recovering from the crash when he was diagnosed with advanced, almost certainly terminal prostate cancer. His doctors were able to slow the cancer down, but his treatments would stop working at a certain point. Look, it's not called Penultimate Destination.

In response to the diagnosis, Koch began funneling enormous amounts of money into cancer research. His entire cancer survival plan is to use his massive fortune to make sure new treatments have been invented by the time his current treatments stop working, so that he will live long enough for something that's not cancer to kill him instead. It may seem selfish and unfair, but remember: That research benefits non-Koch patients too, eventually. And it's working. He's a 76-year-old who's been dying of cancer for one-third of his life and still kicking. We guess Death takes bribes.

The "USS Forest Fire" -- as it was soon to be nicknamed -- burned like, well, uh ... the nickname got it in one, actually. McCain and the other crewmembers pushed a bunch of perfectly good (and really, really expensive) airplanes overboard to prevent the ship from sinking. Despite just surviving a Michael Bay-level explosion and taking shrapnel to his leg, McCain promptly volunteered to be transferred to the USS Oriskany so he could return to combat.

He wound up joining a Marxist-communist militant group called the POUM, which fought for the Republican side. In mid-1937, Orwell stood up in the trench and, perhaps because he was much taller than the average Spaniard, was promptly shot through the neck by a fascist sniper. He later wrote a fascinating story about what it is like to realize you've just been killed in battle.

Now, plenty of people (celebrities included) have been wounded in battle, but it gets worse for Orwell. After a little over a week, a very sick and heavily bandaged Orwell was released from the hospital and told to stumble back to the front or whatever to get his discharge papers. Literally the day after he was released, local Stalinist authorities outlawed Orwell's particular itty-bitty Marxist group and began rounding people up. Orwell was immediately proclaimed a spy, and a manhunt for him began.

A half-dead Orwell spent a week hiding in the bush before he managed to disguise himself as a war tourist (which was a thing -- a terrible, stupid thing) and flee the country, with nothing to declare but a newfound hatred for authoritarianism and Stalinism. He survived being shot through the neck by one side of the war, and then hunted for treason by the other. So when he writes about totalitarianism being bad -- both as a fascist and a communist system -- believe him. He knows about as hard as any man can know anything.

Zachary Frey is a Sophomore at Cornell University, and you can read his 10 most recent articles here.

One of our most popular episodes from 2016 was when we invited Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark from 'My Favorite Murder' to talk about some of the best true-crime stories out there. So successful, in fact, that we're resurrecting it (get it?) for a part two! Metal Fang, the Strangling Executioner and the murderer living in the attic just weren't enough. So Jack O'Brien, Dan O'Brien and the Cracked staff welcome Karen and Georgia back for another creepy hour of serial killers and urban legends that are bound to make you terrified to go outside or talk to a stranger or do anything.

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