It’s not like you need a side-bonus for finding a story about a guy who recently jumped out of a plane, had a parachute fail, then twisted his back-up parachute, plummeted to the ground, all the while being filmed, then hit a large bush of some sort, keeled over on the ground and – survived! My jaw had room to open another notch, when reading about it on metafilter brought up a companion link – The Freefall Research Page, which is dedicated to recording the stories of people who have survived a fall of thousands of feet without a working parachute. ( They’ve even got a companion book which details 200 or so such stories in loving detail…. ) Note – The Free Fall Research page is “primarily focused on falls from aircraft, but we have covered a couple of skyscraper falls”. If you know of any such falls that were higher than 10 stories, they encourage you to “please let us know”.
Randomly : YES, The Man Who Fell To Earth is a movie featuring David Bowie, and NO, he would not have survived a parachute fall in the 1970s, at least judging by the looks of ‘Cracked Actor’ – a fascinating documentary about David Bowie imploding and reconstructing before the camera in his Ziggy Stardust phase. As it turns out, his teeth have improved since then. This is known because googling the above doco-name also reveals the charming 5 minute video ‘a detailed analysis of david bowie’s teeth over time‘ ( ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes).
And YES, bonus points if you also remembered that ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth And Landed It’ was once a title for a skateboard magazine about he who lands often, Tony Hawk.