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Thank you. It's October 13, 1972,

an airplane owned by the Uruguayan Air Force crosses over the Andes Mountains.

On board are 19 players of the old Christians, an amateur Uruguayan rugby team that chartered the plane to take them to a match in Chile. To break up the monotony of the trip,

21-year-old Nando Perado cracks jokes with his teammates. Their laughter is a welcome respite

from the stress of their travels. A storm over the Andes forced the plane to land in

Argentina last night, and the whole team is eager to finally make it to their destination, safe and

sound. Spirits are high as the plane begins to descend. Players and their supporters hardly

pay the growing turbulence any mind, continuing to joke and laugh with one another and toss

around rugby balls. But when the aircraft suddenly drops several hundred feet, cabin grows quiet.

Something obviously is wrong. Nando glances out his window, and instead of seeing cloud cover,

he sees the black ridge of a mountain. Nando and his fellow passengers

scramble to fasten their seatbelts as they realize they're headed straight toward a mountain.

The plane's engine strains and the pilot tries to gain altitude but it's too late.

There's a terrible screeching as the lower part of the plane hits the mountain.

Mando braces himself as pieces of the aircraft are torn away, throwing the airplane against the mountain again

and again, till it skids down the side of a glacier, finally coming to a stop at 12,000

feet in the snow-capped Andes.

Knocked unconscious during the crash, Nando will fall into a coma for three days.

...