Famous Days for Students of English

23-12-1972

It’s October 13, 1972. A team of Uruguayan university rugby players, their friends, and family members fly for a friendly match to Chile. The weather is bad. The pilots make a mistake and they start to go down too early.

At one moment, they see a mountain in front of the plane. The pilots try to fly around it, but it’s too late. The plane hits the top of the mountain with its tail. Then, it hits the ground and it goes down the mountain until it’s stopped by a pile of snow.

25 people out of 45 survive the fall. After the first shock, those who weren’t injured begin to help the injured passengers. Everyone hopes to see rescue planes soon.

The days pass and help is still not coming. After 10 days, they hear on the radio that the rescue operation was stopped. The rescuers believed that the passengers couldn’t survive a crash in the middle of high mountains where temperature goes down to minus 30 degrees Celsius at night.

Now, the survivors know that nobody will come to save them. Three of them start a journey through the mountains to bring help. The next day, they return to the plane with frozen feet.

Soon, the survivors have no food to eat. There are no plants or animals high in the mountains but only ice and rock. After some days, they are extremely hungry. Then, some survivors begin to eat meat from dead bodies. The decision to do so is extremely hard for them, but they have to do it if they want to survive.

Two months after the plane crashes, three of the men decide to journey through the Andes Mountains again. After a 10-day walk in extremely hard conditions, they see a fire and a man next to it. It’s December 23, 1972. 16 people who are still alive are rescued.

Difficult words: pile (something which looks like a hill), rescue (to save from a dangerous situation), crash (an accident when a plane hits something very hard).