Famous author Ernest Hemingway had several close brushes with death in his lifetime. The first occurred when he was serving with the Red Cross on the Italian front lines during World War 1 and was severely wounded by an Austrian mortar shell. In 1935, he shot himself in both calves while wrangling a shark. In 1954, Hemingway and his wife were involved in a plane crash while on a safari in Africa and forced to spend the night in the jungle. The plane sent the next day to retrieve them crashed and caught fire, and several newspapers reported that they had died. The next day, Hemingway emerged from the jungle carrying a bunch of bananas and a bottle of gin. ¹⁾.