Yesterday we featured legendary fighter Ruth Bader Ginsburg, today we’re celebrating a Guinness World Record holding survivor. Seriously. She won her Guinness position by not dying in spectacular fashion.
Betty Lou Oliver was working as an elevator operator in the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945, when an American B-25 smashed into the 78th floor of the famous landmark. There was a thick fog across New York that day, and the pilot hadn’t seen the structure coming. Fortunately, Oliver was not in her elevator when the plane exploded into the building, tearing a hole in the side and starting fires on multiple floors. Unfortunately, rescuers trying to get an injured Betty Lou onto a gurney and down to the ground floor put her into an elevator somewhere around the 75th floor.
The crash had sent pieces of engine like shrapnel into the building, severing the cables of the elevator Betty Lou was put in. Her weight sent the small metal box plummeting 75 stories in free fall. After a 1000ft. drop, the elevator smashed into the basement, crumpling like a tin can on impact. Betty Lou was, incredibly, still alive—though badly injured—when rescuers found her for the second time. The metal lift cables had fallen to the bottom of the elevator shaft in a coil before the elevator reached the bottom, creating a crude but effective cushion which softened the impact slightly.
It turned out that the B-25 was a service bomber being transported from Massachusetts to LaGuardia Airport in NYC when the tragic collision occurred. The pilot, war hero Captain William Smith, had been advised by LaGuardia not to attempt a landing in such bad fog, but Smith ignored the order, got disoriented, and ended up smack in the middle of Manhattan. He, two crew members, and 11 people inside the Empire State building perished.
Betty, just 20-years-old, broke her pelvis, back, and neck. She spent months stabilizing in the hospital, but recovered fully within the year. Bizarrely, the day of the crash had been her last scheduled day on the job—she was supposed to be leaving New York City to join her husband, Oscar Lee, at Fort Smith in Arizona. That trip was, uh, obviously delayed a bit. She did eventually get there, with one a hell of a story to tell.
Betty Lou died in 1999 at the age of 74, leaving behind three children and seven grandchildren.