Remembering the miracles of the 1985 Mexico earthquake (unbelievable stories)
On September 19, 1985, an earthquake rocked Mexico City, killing thousands of people, but heroes and incredible survivors rose above the destruction.
Here are the accounts of a baby that was saved from the debris, a surgeon who is still in operation despite losing four fingers, and the rescue team that was established during the disaster.
Surgeon with toes for fingers
At 7:19 in the morning, Francisco Bucio and his closest friend, Angel, were plastic surgery students on the fourth floor of the General Hospital in the capital when the earthquake occurred.
“Suddenly the (eight-floor) building bent, collapsed and I was in complete darkness. I realized that my right arm was trapped and my hand was crushed. I thought ‘My career’s over,'” he said.
“I heard screams from those who were trapped close to me, and little by little they became silent,” Bucio recalled. “I spent four days like that.”
He was eventually located by his six brothers, who persisted in searching through the pile of debris while the rescuers gave up trying to find survivors. He lost his best friend.
His right thumb was fixed by American doctors, who also fitted him with toes in place of his other four fingers, giving him the ability to hold a scalpel.
Bucio, 58, is a plastic surgeon in Tijuana, a city that borders California. Positive reviews from pleased clients can be found on his website.
The ‘Topos’
When buildings collapsed, Adrian Perez was one of thousands of Mexicans who immediately volunteered to save lives.
He was interning as an engineer at an office in a neighborhood spared from the devastation that befell the rest of the city.
According to him, he hurried to the severely damaged Roma neighborhood “without thinking,” saying it “looked like a war zone.”
His first task was to remove gas tanks from a college that had been “squashed like a sandwhich.”
When he’d finished that, he’d crawled back in among the crumbling, broken walls to discover a young woman, trapped between bodies and broken objects, moaning.
The Topos have travelled the world to provide aid in a number of disasters, such as the massive earthquake that struck Nepal in April and the Asian tsunami that struck in 2004.
“I never thought about the risks. I was only part of the strength of the entire population that was helping, without regard for social class, other people who needed this help,” Perez said. He is still in tears when he thinks about the 1985 tragedy.
Miracle babies
When the hospital where Jesus Francisco Rodriguez Santamaria was born collapsed, a rod was driven into his small chest, and he was only four days old.
“My life was hanging by a thread when they rescued me. The rod made me cry and that’s how they heard me,” Rodriguez said.
But his mother ended up becoming one of the 6,000–20,000 people who passed away that day.
Rodriguez, who turned thirty on September 15, resides in the capital’s southern region, far from the area where his maternity hospital was situated and the area that was most severely damaged.
Although a dedicated fund was established for the kids, it was only operational until they reached college age.
After eighteen years of working at gas stations, Rodriguez recently started law school. Despite his limp from his injuries, he is still able to play football.
The survivor drew strength from the medallion of the Virgin Mary that was discovered in his closed, tiny fist upon his rescue, as well as the love of his adoptive aunt and uncle. No one is sure who placed it there.
Body Fat Helped Babies Survive Quake
The fact that twelve newborns survived for days beneath the debris from Mexico’s powerful earthquake before being rescued, according to pediatricians, is not shocking.
“We often underestimate the protective buffer that Mother Nature offers to newborns,” said Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center pediatrician Dr. Karl F. Schulze. “It is true that humans evolved from the wild, where conditions were not always ideal.”
According to medical professionals, extra body fat makes up 15% of the weight of a healthy newborn. This fat helps the baby get through the first few days of life, when the mother’s milk is scarce and not very nourishing.
According to Schulze, a baby can go up to a month without eating, so it’s normal for them to lose a little weight in the first few days of their lives.
But just like adults, babies also require water to survive, and the biggest threat the Mexico City babies faced was dehydration.
According to Schulze, if water is available, a baby will instinctively drink it. Schulze referenced a well-known instance of an Indian dump site child who survived for weeks by consuming runoff water that was rich in nutrients.
A baby’s metabolism also slows down during physical stress, so it can conserve water and energy by lying still and not moving. According to medical professionals, if a child has something covering their face or nose, it will wriggle free and into clear air.
Babies need a warm environment more than adults do.
Director of the neonatology division at the Montifiore Medical Center Dr. Alan R. Fleischman stated, “Babies don’t shiver like adults do, so they create body heat by burning sugar.” “We keep babies wrapped and dressed in extra clothes because they are delicate.”
The majority of the babies that had survived and were found in the city’s medical center complex were covered in blankets and kept in incubators.The first baby was discovered 55 hours after the catastrophe and the last a few days later.
Hypoglycemia Feared
As a result of running out of sugar, some of the babies discovered in Mexico might experience hypoglycemia, and others might experience brain damage, according to Dr. David A. Clark, a medical professor at the New York Medical College in Valhalla. Those discovered early, though, ought to recover swiftly, he added.
“An adult has unquestionably more advantages than a baby in a situation like this,” he stated. “Yet babies are more resilient than most people realize.”
Franz Ferdinand’s Assassination that sparked World War I
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are shot to death by a Bosnian Serb nationalist during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. The killings sparked a chain of events that led to the eruption of World War I by early August.
The youngest person executed, George Stinney Jr was proven innocent
In 1944, George Stinney Jr. was 14 years old when he was executed in South Carolina. It took only ten minutes to convict him — and 70 years to exonerate him.
Henry Ford, The man popularizing the concept of the weekend off
Henry Ford was the first Industrial Giant to give his employees both Saturday and Sunday off in the hope of encouraging more leisurely use of automobiles and thus popularizing the concept of the "weekend."
Blanche Monnier: Imprisoned For 25 Years For Falling in Love
Blanche Monnier, she was a French woman noted for her beauty, she wished to marry an old lawyer that her mother disapproved of, so she locked her in a small dark room in her attic for 25 years.
Moondyne Joe: The story of Australia's most notorious prison escapee
A man named Joseph Bolitho Johns (A.K.A Moondyne Joe) broke out of Australian prisons so many times that the police were compelled to build a special cell just for him. He escaped from that as well.
Nathan's Famous Doctor Stunt
When Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs first opened in 1916, the owner hired people to dress as doctors and eat hot dogs outside his shop, to convince people his hot dogs were healthy.
Nuclear bomb accidentally dropped on North Carolina in 196
4 January 1961: The 4241st Strategic Wing's Boeing B-52G-95-BW Stratofortress, serial number 58-0187, was on a 24-hour airborne alert mission off the United States' Atlantic Coast.
Nordlingen, The Town Inside A Meteorite Crater With Millions Of Meteorite Diamonds
The German town of Nördlingen is embedded with 72,000 tons of microscopic diamonds. About 15 million years ago, a meteorite hit this region, and the impact created a massive depression and formed rocks containing diamonds, glass, and crystals. The town was built in the impact crater sometime around 898 CE.
The Tragic Story Of Mary Ann Bevan, The ‘Ugliest Woman In The World’
After the death of her husband, Mary Ann Bevan had no income to support herself and her children. She then decided to enter a contest where she won the title of “ugliest woman” and was later hired by a circus. She endured this ridicule from the world to provide for her family.
The History Behind the “No One Dies Alone” Program
In 1986, while doing a night shift at the hospital, Sandra Clarke, a registered nurse, was asked by an elderly patient to stay. She promised to be back after checking on her other patients, but by the time she returned, the gentleman had passed away. Clarke became one of the key figures in launching No One Dies Alone, a program that allows volunteers to sit with terminal patients who have no one else.
3 men lived on top of a billboard in tents for almost 9 months
From 1982-1983, three men in Allentown PA competed in a radio contest in which they lived on top of a billboard in tents. Whoever stayed up longest would win a house. Due to economic pressure from the recession, none of the contestants wanted to give up, so the contest lasted almost 9 months.
Irena Sendler: woman who rescued Jews during holocaust
Irene Sendler was the Zegota resistance group's head of the children's department. She risked her life to smuggle children out of the Warsaw ghetto, place them with Polish families or orphanages, give each child a new identity, and keep records so that they could be returned to their families. In 1943, the Gestapo arrested and sentenced her to death, but she was rescued by Zegota.
Ea-Nasir: world's oldest written customer complaint
This clay tablet, written in cuneiform, is the oldest known written customer complaint about the delivery of poor quality copper ingots. Originally from ancient Babylon, the tablet dates back to 1750 BCE, and it was written by a customer named Nanni to a merchant named Ea-Nasir. It is currently housed in the British Museum.
Will & William Wests: The puzzling situation of two inmates who are identical but not related
These are the mugshots of Will West and William West, and they are not related. They were both sent to Leavenworth Prison at the same time, in 1903, and after some confusion, the staff understood they had two different prisoners with the nearly same name, who looked exactly alike. They are part of the reason fingerprints are now used as identification.
The history of Flour sack clothing fashion
After Kansas mill owners found women reused flour sack materials into apparel in the 1920s and 1930s, they started applying patterned designs to give families with more fashionable patterns and material.
Archaeologists Uncover 2,000-Year-Old Amazonian Cities Using Lidar Technology
Deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, archaeologists have uncovered an ancient network of urban settlements once inhabited by the Upano people about 2,000 years ago. Using cutting-edge lidar technology, these discoveries reveal a highly organized society featuring sophisticated agricultural systems, drainage canals, and extensive road networks. This transformative find challenges long-held assumptions about ancient Amazonian societies and sheds light on a complex civilization thriving in one of the world’s most biodiverse regions.
Inside China’s Footbinding Tradition: The Painful Ritual of Lotus Shoes and Bound Feet
In China, Lotus shoes were used to bind women's feet to keep their feet small
The unbroken seal on King Tutankhamun's tomb until 1922
The unbroken seal of Tutankhamun's tomb before it was opened in 1923, it was unbroken for over 3000 years.
Why the Brooklyn Bridge Was Once Crossed by 17 Camels and 21 Elephants
On May 30, 1883, a rumor that the Brooklyn Bridge was going to collapse caused a stampede, which killed at least at twleve people. To prove the bridge was safe, P.T. Barnum led a parade of 21 elephants over it.
George Dantzig solved two famous “unsolved” problems in statistics mistakenly as assignment
In 1939, George Dantzig arrived late to his statistics class. On the board were two famous “unsolved” problems in statistics written as an example by his professor. Dantzig mistook the examples for homework assignments. He solved the “unsolved” problems and submitted the homework to his professor a few days later. His solutions earned him a doctorate.
D.B. Cooper: Man who hijacked a plane and jumped out with a $200,000
On November 22, 1971, DB Cooper hijacked a Boeing 727, drank a whisky, smoked a fag, and then jumped out of the plane with $200,000. He was never again seen.
Medals of Friendship: The Enduring Olympic Story of 1936
At the 1936 Summer Olympics, two Japanese pole vaulters named Sueo Oe and Shuhei Nishida tied for second, but they declined to compete against each other. As a result, Nishida was awarded the silver medal and Oe won a bronze medal. Upon returning to Japan, the athletes had their medals cut in half and spliced together to create new "friendship medals," which were half silver and half bronze.
Jack the Baboon operated a railroad, earned a living, and never made a mistake
A baboon worked as a signalman for the railroad in the late 1800s. He never made a mistake and worked for the railroad until the day he died.
Man's Blood Helped Save Millions of Babies
Australian blood donor James Harrison has been one of our most impressive and valued donors, having donated for 60 years. Know his story, how he was a pioneer of our Anti-D program, and why this matters.
Quaker Oats Fed Children with Radioactive Oatmeal
In the 1940s and 1950s, Quaker Oats and MIT conducted experiments on radioactive iron and calcium-containing cereal. The diet was part of a study to see if the nutrients in Quaker oatmeal traveled throughout the body. In January 1998, a $1.85 million settlement was reached for 30 victims who came forward.
