10 People Who Survived Gruesome Accidents Against All The Odds

In the September of 1925, the Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, boarded a bus with he boyfriend, Alex Gómez Arias. During the journey, the bus driver tried to dodge around an oncoming streetcar, but misjudged it and the two vehicles collided. The bus was bent almost in half and then shattered, throwing its occupants into the street.

Her boyfriend recalled how Kahlo's clothes had been torn from her body by the force of the accident and she was somehow covered in a golden pigment powder that somebody on the bus had been carrying. She was lying in the road and she had a large piece of metal handrail stuck through her.

Doctors thought that she would surely die in the hospital as they discovered the extent of her injuries. Her spinal column was broken in three places; her collarbone was broken as were her third and fourth ribs; she had eleven fractures in her right leg and her right foot was dislocated and crushed. Her left shoulder was out of joint, and her pelvis was broken in three places. The steel handrail had entered through the left hip, pierced her uterus and exited through the genitals. Somehow, Kahlo survived and underwent as many as 35 operations to try and put her back together.

It was during her two-year convalescence that Kahlo began to paint. As she lay in bed recovering, she had a mirror attached to her ceiling so that she could paint a series of self-portraits documenting her pain. She went on to become one of the most well-known painters of the 20th century.