OK so aviation has a whole drawer full of stories that sound like someone made them up at a party, and ynetnews just rounded up ten of them, and I read the whole thing with my hand over my mouth.

A plane loses much of its roof in midair. A captain gets sucked through his windshield and survives. Four engines die one by one over the ocean. These are real events, which is the part that gets me. You couldn't pitch half of them as fiction because an editor would laugh you out of the room.

What I love about these stories is the humans involved and the fact that we get to read about them at all. Every weird, terrifying close call on the list is part of why modern flying feels so boring now, and boring is the greatest compliment you can give an airline. Someone survived each one of these, and what they learned quietly stitched itself into everything we now know about staying safe in the sky.

The list's own title promises dead engines and planes that flew themselves, so you already know some of these stories drift from scary into just plain strange. The sky keeps a much weirder diary than any of us give it credit for.

Go read the full list, because I refuse to spoil all ten. Just maybe don't read it ON a plane. Read it on the ground, ideally with a snack, ideally while marveling that you've ever trusted a giant metal tube at 35,000 feet and been completely right to.