That Time Ernest Hemingway Survived Two Plane Crashes in 24 Hours

The first one happened on January 23, 1954, during a sightseeing trip above the brush-covered wilderness near Murchison Falls in northwestern Uganda, then a British protectorate. Hemingway was one of three occupants aboard the small Cessna that was originally chartered as a Christmas gift for one of the other two: his wife Mary Welsh.

They went down very soon after takeoff when, to avoid a flock of low-flying ibises, the pilot Roy Marsh - the third man on board - clipped one of the plane’s wings on a telegraph wire. It immediately went into an uncontrollable dive, and crashed down in a thick grouping of scrub trees near the bank of the Nile river. The relatively soft landing kept the plane from getting too badly mangled, and was almost certainly the reason each of its occupants avoided picking up any serious injuries. Hemingway walked away from the wreck with just a sprained shoulder, Mary with only a few cracked ribs, and the pilot with merely a harrowing story to tell.

The three of them spent the cold Ugandan night nervously waiting for help deep inside lion and crocodile country, but the biggest threat to their safety ultimately came from a herd of elephants that wandered dangerously close to their makeshift camp under the cover of night.