Lieutenant Colonel William Henry Rankin (October 16, 1920 – July 6, 2009) was the first person to survive a fall from the top of a cumulonimbus thunderstorm cloud.
[1] He suffered immediate frostbite, and decompression caused his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth to bleed.
[5] After ten minutes, Rankin was still aloft, carried by updrafts and getting hit by hailstones.
Lightning appeared, which he described as blue blades several feet thick, and thunder that he could feel.
Rankin wrote The Man Who Rode the Thunder about his experience;[3] Floyd C. Gale called the book a "thrilling true adventure".