42 Odd And Unsettling World Facts That Might Keep You Up At Night

The internet collected these, and it is hard to look away.

He wasn't supposed to survive. He got 35 more years anyway. A man is hanging lifeless from a utility pole, 20 feet in the air, his body limp against his harness. The only thing keeping him from falling is a belt buckle. It's 1967. Randall Champion and J.D. Thompson are just doing routine maintenance the kind of job they'd done a hundred times before. Then Champion's hand brushes a live wire. In an instant, he's unconscious. No pulse. No time. Thompson can't get him down. There's no room to do CPR up there. So he does the only thing he can: he presses his mouth to his partner's and breathes for him. Again. Again. Again. Somewhere below, a photographer named Rocco Morabito happens to be driving by. He hears the shouting, looks up, and lifts his camera not knowing he's about to capture one of the most powerful images in photography history. Thompson feels a pulse. Unbuckles his own harness. Carries Champion down the pole on his shoulder like a fireman. Starts CPR on the ground with another lineman at his side. By the time the ambulance arrives, Champion is breathing on his own. He would go on to live another 35 years. That split-second decision to keep breathing air into a man everyone else might've given up on bought him three and a half more decades of life. Birthdays. Holidays. Time with people he loved. This is why CPR training exists. This is why knowing what to do in those first few minutes matters more than almost anything else you'll ever learn. You don't need to be a hero. You just need to know what to do. Get certified. You never know whose 35 years you're holding in your hands.