Famous People Who Survived Infamous Events

By the very fact that they became stars, celebrities are different from regular people. Blessed with talents, skills, and charisma, or the wherewithal and tools to harness those gifts and turn them into something that's career-fueling and broadly loved, celebrities usually get to live their best lives. Being a star of movies, TV, sports, politics, music, or high society comes with it certain privileges like wealth, acclaim, and enjoying the best of what the world has to offer.

And yet, celebrities aren't really all that dissimilar from everyone else when trouble happens. They're subject to the same tragedies, sources of harm, and potentially fatal phenomena as the rest of us. It seems like whenever a natural disaster or catastrophic event occurs, we hear about the famous people who were involved. Not only are we curious about celebrities' lives in general, but their experiences dealing with trauma and loss humanize those history-changing events for the rest of us. Here are some stars of the present and the past who were eyewitnesses to horrible things, and who lived to tell their story to the rest of the world.

On April 5, 1936, Tupelo, Mississippi, endured one of the most destructive and deadly weather events in United States history. Tornadoes are measured on a scale of F1 to F5, with F5 being the most severe, and it was a twister of that latter magnitude — the "Tupelo Tornado" — that touched down and killed more than 200 people. It was just one element of a storm system that tore across the Southeast over two days: Beginning in Arkansas as an F3 tornado, it spun off another F3 and an F4 tornado, and they'd collectively killed 14 people by the time one twister reached northeastern Mississippi. When the storm arrived in Tupelo, it left 11 people on the ridge of town dead before moving into downtown and neighborhoods. In addition to taking at least 216 lives, more than 1,000 people may have been injured, with casualty tolls especially severe because of the loss of the Tupelo water reservoir and hospital.

Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and he spent the first 15 years of his life there, raised in the small house in which he was born. When the Tupelo Tornado struck in 1936, Presley was only about 15 months old, and he and his family waited out the storm. While many buildings in Tupelo (whose mayor was Presley's great uncle, Noah Presley) were completely totaled, the Presley family home didn't suffer any damage at all.

In September 2008, TRVSDJ-AM played a free show at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, and the act's primary members were Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and electronic musician DJ AM, or Adam Goldstein. Following the show, the musicians boarded a small plane at Columbia Metropolitan Airport to head back to California. Just after takeoff, and with air traffic control tower spotting sparks, the plane overshot the runway and crashed onto a wall over a highway, causing it to burst into flames. Four people died immediately: Barker's employees and friends Charles Still and Chris Baker, and pilots Sarah Lemmon and James Bland. 

Two of the six people involved in the accident survived: Goldstein (who died of a drug overdose 11 months later) and Barker. The drummer got out of the fiery wreckage with the use of an emergency exit, and in doing so, he injured himself. "I jumped right into the jet, which is full of fuel. My whole body lit up. I had jet fuel on my whole body," he said on "The Joe Rogan Experience" (via BuzzFeed News). 

The survivors were rushed to the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, Georgia, and were listed as being in critical condition. Two-thirds of Barker's body had sustained jet fuel burns. It took 26 surgeries, multiple skin graft operations, and three months of recovery and physical therapy before Barker could properly walk again.

If you've ever wondered what happened to the hair metal bands of the 1980s, the answer is often that they kept touring, only playing smaller venues. On February 20, 2023, The Station in West Warwick, Rhode Island, hosted Great White — or at least, a partial reunion of the original Great White, dubbed Jack Russell's Great White — and more than 400 fans showed up. As the band began playing, its tour manager triggered pyrotechnics from the back of the stage. The Station's management had expressly forbidden Great White from launching pyro, as it was considered extremely dangerous to do so in an enclosed space.

Indeed, a fire immediately erupted. Great White singer Jack Russell tried to do what he could by pouring cups of water on the flames. That did nothing, and Russell and Great White managed to quickly exit the venue through a stage door. Meanwhile, the 400 people inside rightfully panicked as the fire raged, exploding beams, the roof, and liquor bottles in the bar. Two of the four posted exits had been previously barricaded and weren't accessible, leading to a crush of people at the single, main entrance, and the stage door used by Great White was blocked by a bouncer. 

Because so many people couldn't leave, the pyrotechnic fire directly led to the deaths of 100 people. "I know what happened. And I'm not gonna put the blame on anybody," Russell said in the documentary "America's Deadliest Concert: The Guest List" (via Blabbermouth). "It was just a horrible, horrible tragedy, and I wish I could go back and cancel that show."

Following her 1996 divorce from Prince Andrew — a member of the historically scandalous U.K. royal family and a son of Queen Elizabeth II — Sarah, Duchess of York, became better known by her real name, Sarah Ferguson, and spent most of her time working with nonprofit groups and charities. Ferguson helped form one such group called Chances for Children, which kept an American office on a high floor in one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.

Ferguson was due at her organization's headquarters for an 8:45 a.m. meeting on September 11, 2001. She was running just a little late that morning, and her car pulled up to the World Trade Center at about 8:47 a.m., mere seconds after the terrorist-hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 passenger plane collided with the complex's North Tower. Chances for Children staff may very well have died in the orchestrated attack had they been in the office, and not in the lobby waiting to receive Ferguson. When the former royal showed up, she helped get her employees into her car and leave for safety.

A luminary in the fine dining scene of New York City, chef Michael Lomonaco drew crowds to Le Cirque and 21 Club before he took the position of culinary director at Windows of the World in 1997. An upscale restaurant with an impeccable reputation and impressive views, it resided in parts of the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan.

Lomonaco reported for work on the morning of September 11, 2001, as he always did. Because he arrived earlier than expected, around 8:30, he decided to get his broken eyeglasses fixed at an optometry office in the WTC's shopping section. At about 8:46 a.m., while he waited on the repair, he heard and felt a large crash all around him. "I just thought, 'Could that be the subway?' It turns out it was the impact of the first plane," Lomonaco recalled to MarketWatch. Indeed, a passenger plane hijacked by terrorists had struck the tower. 

Very quickly after, following a loss of electricity in the office, Lomonaco evacuated and witnessed debris falling from high in the towers, very near to the site of Windows of the World. Electing to head back inside to help evacuate any of his employees who may have arrived already, Lomonaco saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center and couldn't go back in. "I heard the roar of the jet engines. I looked up at the moment of impact," Lomonaco said.

There aren't that many famous interior designers, and Nate Berkus is one of them. Berkus is a contributor to and host of many HGTV programs, a star of his own eponymous daytime talk show, and a purveyor and curator of multiple product lines, yet Berkus's career took off just after he experienced a personal tragedy amidst the backdrop of one of the worst natural disasters in modern history. 

What became known as the Boxing Day Tsunami began just before 8 a.m. on December 26, 2004, when one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded — hitting 9.1 on the Richter scale — erupted below the Indian Ocean. That set off violent tidal waves, which destructively and brutally landed on the coastal shores of multiple nations over the next few hours, moving as fast as 500 miles per hour. Banda Aceh, a city on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, was buried and suffered the deaths of 100,000 people. In Thailand, 5,400 people died.

Resorts and tourist spots throughout Southeast Asia bore the devastation, including Arugam Bay in Sri Lanka. That's where Berkus and his partner, photographic artist Fernando Bengoechea, were vacationing. Bengochea is believed to have been swept out to sea and drowned, as his body never surfaced, which was the ultimate fate of many of the victims of the tsunami. Berkus suffered only superficial injuries and numerous wounds. "I had scars. I have scars still, not extensive," he told People. "But if you know, you know."

Another big name who experienced the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami from a traumatically close distance was action movie superstar Jet Li. 

A martial arts champion who started his film career in Asia in the 1980s, Jet Li captured the attention of English-speaking audiences in the 2000s with hits like "Hero," "Romeo Must Die," "Mulan," and "The Expendables." The action movie superstar was also another big name who experienced the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami from a traumatically close distance. Tidal waves triggered by a historically powerful earthquake deep below the Indian Ocean obliterated communities and high-end resorts across Southeast Asia, and Li arrived at an example of the latter, the Maldives-based location of the Four Seasons, a few hours before the tsunami happened. 

Having endured earthquakes before, Li registered the seismic event and then went about his day, taking his daughters to the beach about two hours later. "We were just outside the hotel, by the pool and slightly above the beach, when I saw the water come," Li recalled in Newsweek. The actor and his nanny each grabbed a child and attempted to return to their hotel but found themselves underwater after a few steps. "I turned back, and everything — the beach, the swimming pool — was gone." Li called out for help, and four men pulled the party to safety.

On Friday, November 13, 2015, terrorists associated with ISIS launched a coordinated attack on the city of Paris. At 9:20 p.m., three bombs exploded all at once inside the heavily populated Stade de France sports venue. Elsewhere around the metropolitan area, at almost exactly the same time, four shooters opened fire at packed bars and restaurants around the city. The deadliest and most brutal attack of the evening occurred at the Bataclan, a 1,500-seat concert hall that had sold every ticket for a show by the hard rock band Eagles of Death Metal. The American group, led by singer Jesse Hughes, was onstage when three ISIS gunmen forced their way into the venue and fired in every direction.

Hughes and his bandmates rushed backstage to what they thought was safety, although Hughes encountered a gun-toting man in a hallway who took aim at the musician. "I thought I was dead, I just waited for the shots to hit me," Hughes later told Sweden's TV4 (via NBC News). The bullets didn't hit him, and he found safety. Elsewhere in the Bataclan, Eagles of Death Metal merchandise organizer Nick Alexander, was shot and killed along with three representatives from the band's record label. Across all six terrorist assaults, 352 people were injured and 130 people died. Of that figure, 89 were those at the Eagles of Death Metal show.

One of the most powerful first ladies in U.S. history, Eleanor Roosevelt held the position for longer than anyone, from 1933 to 1945. Both of Roosevelt's parents were members of prominent and wealthy political families: her father was a sibling of Theodore Roosevelt, and her mother was linked to the Livingstons. That status afforded Roosevelt some high-class opportunities, such as traveling in luxurious conditions aboard ocean liners in the late 19th century.

On May 19, 1887, 2-year-old Eleanor Roosevelt and her parents were on board the SS Britannic, a ship in the fleet of the White Star Line. It had just left port in New York City and was bound for Liverpool in England. More than 300 miles off the shore of New Jersey, the SS Britannic was pushing through dense fog when it was hit by another White Star Line ship, the Celtic. Colliding at a particularly violent near-right angle, the sharp bow of the Celtic plunged 10 feet into the side of the Britannic. The impact immediately killed six people in the low-cost, steerage section of the Britannic, while another six were sent adrift into the sea and presumed dead. Young Eleanor Roosevelt, spotted crying and being combative about wanting to get into a lifeboat, was among the ship's survivors. She reportedly developed a lifelong fear of water from that point on.

A celebrated theatrical performer, Charles Nelson Reilly was a Broadway legend, with recognition from the Tony Awards bookending his long career. He won a Tony for acting in the 1962 musical "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" and was nominated for directing in 1997 for "The Gin Game." In between, he became a household name for his work as a colorful, curmudgeonly presence on celebrity panel game shows, particularly "Match Game" in the 1970s.

When he was 13 years old, Reilly was among the estimated 6,000 to 8,000 attendees of a tent-based staging of the traveling Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus on Barbour Street in Hartford, Connecticut. As the Great Wallendas started performing a trapeze act, a fire broke out, likely caused by a still-lit cigarette butt that made contact with the canvas of the tent on the outside, near the men's bathroom. The surface quickly became engulfed in flames, helped along by the flammable paraffin wax and gasoline used for waterproofing. Screaming patrons ran to get out, but many exits were inaccessible due to animal cages. Chunks of flaming canvas fell onto the crowd as they pushed and tore their way to freedom. In under 10 minutes, the entire big top was destroyed, and 170 people had been killed by a combination of fire, smoke, and stampede.

As a teenager, Alex Chilton scored a No. 1 hit in 1967, "The Letter," with the Box Tops. The group split up and Chilton moved on to Big Star, a band with a tragic story. Highly influential but unable to sell very many copies of its albums, Big Star broke up and Chilton, tired of being jerked around by the music industry, left his hometown of Nashville to start anew in New Orleans in 1982. While playing in bar bands and working a string of regular-guy jobs, Chilton saved enough money to buy a well-weathered 19th-century Creole-style cottage in the Tremé neighborhood.

When Hurricane Katrina pummeled New Orleans in the late summer of 2005, the Tremé neighborhood was hit especially hard by encroaching flood waters and high winds. In total, the natural disaster was responsible for $81 billion worth of damages to New Orleans. Many residents lost their homes, and 1,500 people in the area died. Chilton's home suffered the wrath of the hurricane, and he nearly lost his life, too. The raised structure didn't flood, but its outer walls endured extensive damage from the very high winds of the storm. 

Chilton refused to evacuate, however, nailing boards to the windows and staying in the home, fearing looters. After five days and growing more afraid, feeling stranded, and running out of food, Chilton climbed onto the roof of the house and waved his arms until he got the attention of a helicopter, which airlifted him to safety.

Another major figure in American music history who survived the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was Fats Domino. A pioneer of the New Orleans school of R&B that helped form the basis for early rock n' roll, the vocally gifted piano virtuoso is best known for songs that became standards, like "Ain't That a Shame," "Blueberry Hill," and "I'm Walking."

Born in the city where he was a lifelong resident, Domino didn't want to leave his home in the hurricane-afflicted Lower Ninth Ward area when the flooding began. He stayed behind to watch over his ailing wife, Rosemary, refusing evacuation and assistance. For days, Domino's friends and relatives weren't aware if he survived, and he was even presumed dead after media outlets captured a message in scrawled graffiti on the musician's home reading "RIP Fats. You will be missed," according to The Independent. Hours after the news of Domino's supposed death began to spread, CNN confirmed that he'd been pulled out of his flooded home by a helicopter sent by the U.S. Coast Guard as part of relief efforts.

The Beverly Hills Supper Club, a cabaret-style nightclub outside Cincinnati, drew huge crowds with its slate of dinner, cocktails, and major acts. On May 28, 1977, 1,200 people — double the entire venue's capacity — packed into the club's Cabaret Room to see John Davidson, a Broadway star, crooner, and host of "The John Davidson Show." As opening act Teter and McDonald, a ventriloquism duo, performed, an electrical fire started in the unused Zebra Room, spreading noxious fumes and smoke into the Cabaret Room. A busboy interrupted the ventriloquists to urge the audience to evacuate, and many thought it was a bit.

Those who did try to get out struggled to do so in the packed room. Davidson helped the full house of patrons there to see him escape by holding open an out-of-the-way back door entrance. "I was one of the lucky ones that got out through a door that was just put in the year before," Davidson told WKRC-TV in Cincinnati. Davidson's musical director died in the fire, and he had to identify the body at an emergency morgue set up at a nearby gymnasium. "It changed my life," Davidson recalled. "It made me re-evaluate the value of life and how fragile we all are. It was a terrible night." 

The nightclub performer helped save the lives of countless fans, but many became trapped inside the room as it filled with fire and smoke. At the Beverly Hills Supper Club that night, 165 people died.

A little after 3 p.m. on August 28, 1990, a tornado registering at the maximum level of F5 hit the Chicago suburb of Plainfield, Illinois. Wind speeds were estimated to have peaked in the range of 318 miles per hour, and in just 30 minutes' time, it created a path of destruction 16.4 miles long and as much as half a mile wide that killed 29 people, injured 350 individuals, and left $160 million in property damage. About 1,000 homes were damaged and 470 eradicated.

Future movie star Melissa McCarthy was raised in Plainfield, and she was home for the weekend from college to see her parents and friends, and was at the townhouse home of one of those pals when the tornado suddenly hit. "We were sitting on the couch in front of patio windows. I don't remember what happened, but I think it must have been a pressure change," McCarthy recalled on an episode of "Hot Ones." "And I just remember him grabbing me really roughly, and jerking me by the shirt and we went toward his basement stairs." 

While they hid for safety in the cellar, McCarthy heard lightning strike and then calm was restored after a few minutes. When they ascended the stairs, they discovered that the windows had all broken, that the top level of the home had been torn away by the tornado, and the whole block of townhouses had been destroyed.

Yogi Berra played for the New York Yankees for 18 seasons, helped the team capture 10 World Series championships, and won the American League's MVP prize three times. His career may have lasted longer; while Berra played minor league ball in 1943, he didn't appear in a Yankees uniform until 1946, because he joined the U.S. Navy at the peak of combat operations during World War II.

On June 6, 1944, 150,000 troops representing the Allied nations of the U.S., U.K., Canada, Norway, and Free France stormed the beaches of Normandy to forcefully liberate a region of France from the control of Nazi Germany. That pivotal moment of World War II, code-named D-Day, involved 6,000 ships and 50,000 vehicles, and for the latter to advance, the former had to clear a path. Nineteen-year-old Berra was one of six members of the Navy selected and trained to operate a seafaring craft armed with rockets and machine guns that would be one of the first to arrive on D-Day. Berra fired at and eliminated German machine-gunners to guarantee safe passage for the thousands of troops running in on foot. 

It was an extremely dangerous mission, and while successful, it resulted in significant losses. As many as 9,000 German soldiers were killed, while more than 12,000 Allied individuals died, were injured, or were captured. But not Berra: he lived to take part in a similar Navy-powered drive to free southern France later in 1944.

Before the United States formally entered World War II following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, 24-year-old John F. Kennedy joined the U.S. Navy. He was repeatedly promoted throughout until he was a Lieutenant, Junior Grade, and was assigned to be a commander of PT boats, long and fast torpedo-equipped watercraft used for patrols and fighting. Lt. Kennedy assumed command of PT 109 in April 1943, and it was one of several sent to assist in the invasion of New Georgia in the Solomon Islands, a skirmish in the Pacific Theater. On the evening of August 1, the Japanese destroyer ship Amagiri opened fire and split Kennedy's boat in half.

Almost all men onboard were sent into the ocean, while engineer Patrick McMahon was seriously burned by a fuel explosion. Two men had died, four could swim to safety, and the survivors tended to their injured shipmates. Kennedy personally escorted the badly hurt McMahon away from the wrecked boat by pulling him with the strap of a life vest he held with his teeth.

From 1965 to 1971, Robert Clary co-starred on the sitcom "Hogan's Heroes" as Corporal Louis LeBeau, a French soldier captured by the Nazis during the Battle of France in 1940, and sent to live in a prisoners of war camp. That very dark premise somehow fueled a lot of comedy on the World War II period piece "Hogan's Heroes," which offered a light-hearted version of a horrific setting that Clary had endured in real life two decades earlier.

Like the most famous character of his career, Clary was also French, and as a teenager, he and the other Jewish residents of Paris were arrested when the Nazis invaded and seized control following victory in the Battle of France. Clary was sent to a slave labor camp in Germany, where he was forced to make shoes. Allied air raids frequently dropped bombs on the facility, meaning Clary constantly faced both cruelty and death. He also survived Buchenwald, a Nazi concentration camp where around 56,000 people, primarily Jewish people, were systematically murdered, certainly one of the worst ways to die during World War II. 

High-ranking soldiers and guards made Clary, a skilled singer and accordion player, entertain them. "Singing, entertaining, and being in kind of good health at my age, that's why I survived," Clary told The Hollywood Reporter. Near the end of the war, Clary was among a contingent of 4,000 surviving Nazi prisoners forced to participate in a march of several hundred miles; along the way 2,500 people died.

The story of legendary soul singer-songwriter Otis Redding is forever linked to that of his explosively versatile backing band, the Bar-Kays. It formed in 1964 in the Memphis soul scene as an instrumental act and studio collective, which included traditional rock and pop players such as a guitarist and drummer, along with an organist and a horn section. When Redding's career started to take off in 1966 with hits like "Respect" and "Try a Little Tenderness," he needed a solid band to assist him, and he hired the Bar-Kays in 1967. On December 9, 1967, two days after he recorded what would become his signature tune, "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," Redding and the Bar-Kays headed to a studio in Cleveland to tape a performance on the nationally broadcast music show "Upbeat," and then took Redding's just-purchased small plane to reach its next gig.

On the way, and just four miles from the Madison Municipal Airport in Wisconsin, the plane malfunctioned and crashed into Lake Monona. Otis Redding's tragic death happened when he was just 26 years old, dying in the crash along with the flight crew, a road manager, and four members of the Bar-Kays. The only survivor of the accident was the band's trumpet player, Ben Cauley. The only other member of the band who didn't die in the crash was bass player James Alexander, who'd taken a different flight to Madison.

A London theatrical star, actor Betsy Drake headed for the United States on board the liner Queen Mary in 1947, where she fended off the romantic advances of superstar Cary Grant. He found her in New York, and they began a personal and professional relationship, marrying in 1949 and starring together in "Every Girl Should Be Married" and "Room for One More." Drake more or less retired from acting in the early 1950s, and when she visited Grant on the Spain set of "The Pride of the Passion," she believed that he'd started an affair with the film's other star, Sophia Loren. Drake quickly booked passage back to the U.S. via the Italian cruise ship, the Andrea Doria, boarding at Gibraltar.

Just around 1,100 people and 572 crew members were present on that Atlantic Ocean-crossing journey. On the last night of the trip, and hours before it could dock in New York, the boat traversed the coast of Nantucket in New England, where the skies were so foggy that the M.S. Stockholm couldn't see the Andrea Doria in its path. The two ships collided, causing the Andrea Doria to capsize. 

Drake was in her stateroom reading at the moment of impact, and after feeling the strike, she immediately put on a life vest and headed to an upper deck to prepare to evacuate. The actor was among the 1,660 passengers to be rescued in time, and not one of the 46 people from her ship who died.