ATOT Version of Snopes.com

[SXMP]

A friend found this supposed news story on a new calender called "News To Amuse" he recieved for Christmas:

"On January 3, 1943, ball turret gunner Alan Magee was hit while flying over France. With no parachute, he jumped from the burning B-17, free-falling 22000 ft, and landing on the glass roof of a train station. At that exact moment, a bomb exploded inside the station, the two forces cancelling each other out. The glass roof never even cracked, and Magee made a complete recovery."

The calender is made by a company called DateWorks. I searched scopes.com as well as google, and can't seem to turn anything up as towards the validaty. I strongly doubt its truth.

Reasons why:
1) Physics would say that the bomb would have to exert the same force on the glass roof as the man falling, (or the 2 forces would have to cancel within the threshold of the glass's breaking point.)
2)I can recall hearing of maybe 1 other story where someone free-fell from over 15k feet and survived.
3)The odds of the explosion happening at the exact moment of impact appear to me to be astronomical.

Any thoughts/facts?

 

[Eli]

Musta been one weak-ass bomb.

 

[fumbduck]

If they print it, it's true 😛

Let's look at another common coincidence case. The one from Magnolia, where the kid jumped off the roof of his apartment building to commit suicide, but right as he passed by his apartment window, his mom's shotgun went off killing him, even though he would have been saved by the nets below from construction or whatever.

 

[SXMP]

Originally posted by: fumbduck
If they print it, it's true 😛 Let's look at another common coincidence case. The one from Magnolia, where the kid jumped off the roof of his apartment building to commit suicide, but right as he passed by his apartment window, his mom's shotgun went off killing him, even though he would have been saved by the nets below from construction or whatever.

I'm sorry, what are you talking about!?

 

[fumbduck]

Originally posted by: SXMP

Originally posted by: fumbduck
If they print it, it's true 😛 Let's look at another common coincidence case. The one from Magnolia, where the kid jumped off the roof of his apartment building to commit suicide, but right as he passed by his apartment window, his mom's shotgun went off killing him, even though he would have been saved by the nets below from construction or whatever.

I'm sorry, what are you talking about!?

Nothing, I made that up, turns out it was false.

 

[crypticlogin]

1) Physics would say that the bomb would have to exert the same force on the glass roof as the man falling, (or the 2 forces would have to cancel within the threshold of the glass's breaking point.)

Forget the glass, forget the bomb. That stuff's just made up to sensationalize the story. The physics would be that this man had some velocity (and if this page is to believed, that's some 120-150mph terminal), then *stopped*. It doesn't matter if the surface he hit was glass, wood, a truck of pillows, etc. he just experienced some massive positive G's.

edit: I don't think the story is true, and if there was a guy who survived a fall like that, there was no bomb and there was no miraculously saved glass ceiling.

 

[burnedout]

Here is another account of the story that makes no mention of a simultaneous bomb explosion.

Text

 

[BillGates]

It's definitely gotta be fiction. One sidenote is that History Channel had a cool show on ball turret gunners on last night - no mention of this story though!

 

[FoBoT]

that sounds very implasible to me


i think it is false

 

[Colt45]

BS-o-meter

not bull |==================O==| BS

 

[dmcowen674]

Don't think the plane was at 20,000. It was going down. The crash through the roof slowed him down enough to survive.

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: fumbduck

Originally posted by: SXMP

Originally posted by: fumbduck
If they print it, it's true 😛 Let's look at another common coincidence case. The one from Magnolia, where the kid jumped off the roof of his apartment building to commit suicide, but right as he passed by his apartment window, his mom's shotgun went off killing him, even though he would have been saved by the nets below from construction or whatever.

I'm sorry, what are you talking about!?

Nothing, I made that up, turns out it was false.

YOU made it up?

 

[jayXTP]

Originally posted by: HotChic

Originally posted by: fumbduck

Originally posted by: SXMP

Originally posted by: fumbduck
If they print it, it's true 😛 Let's look at another common coincidence case. The one from Magnolia, where the kid jumped off the roof of his apartment building to commit suicide, but right as he passed by his apartment window, his mom's shotgun went off killing him, even though he would have been saved by the nets below from construction or whatever.

I'm sorry, what are you talking about!?

Nothing, I made that up, turns out it was false.

YOU made it up?

No, he saw it in the movie "Magnolia" with Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, etc.

 

[OrganizedChaos]

Originally posted by: tenchim

1) Physics would say that the bomb would have to exert the same force on the glass roof as the man falling, (or the 2 forces would have to cancel within the threshold of the glass's breaking point.)

Forget the glass, forget the bomb. That stuff's just made up to sensationalize the story. The physics would be that this man had some velocity (and if this page is to believed, that's some 120-150mph terminal), then *stopped*. It doesn't matter if the surface he hit was glass, wood, a truck of pillows, etc. he just experienced some massive positive G's.

edit: I don't think the story is true, and if there was a guy who survived a fall like that, there was no bomb and there was no miraculously saved glass ceiling.

yup yup, hes right it screws up your aorta somehow, happens to mexicans who stage car accidents all the time

 

[Howard]

False.