The photo was taken just weeks before his deathNorth Sentinel Island, located in the Indian Ocean’s Bay of Bengal, is home to one of the world’s most mysterious uncontacted tribes.
The Sentinelese have lived in isolation for more than 60,000 years and are fiercely protective of their land and traditions, which remains untouched by modern civilisation.
In order to maintain their way of life, the tribe is known for its hostility towards outsiders, killing those who stray too close to the 23-square-mile island.
Despite this, in 2018 American missionary John Allen Chau paid local fishermen to take him to North Sentinel Island so he could preach Christianity to the tribe – though they warned him that is was risky.
Chau understood the potential dangers of his mission and told his family in a letter to ‘not be angry at [the tribe] or at God if [he got] killed’.
Upon arriving to the island in a dinghy on 15 November, 2018, he tried to prove that he wasn’t a threat to the tribe by offering them gifts such as fish – but he was met with a series of arrows being shot at him.
In a diary entry, he wrote: “I hollered: ‘My name is John, I love you and Jesus loves you’.
“I regret I began to panic slightly as I saw them string arrows in their bows. I picked up the fish and threw it towards them. They kept coming.
The isolated Sentinelise tribe are known for their hostility towards outsiders, but this didn’t stop an American missionary from trying to contact them in 2018 (Survival International)
“I paddled like I never have in my life back to the boat.”
But this didn’t deter Chau, who once again tried to get close to the tribe.
On his third attempt two days later, he was reportedly shot and killed with the fisherman who helped him travel to the island claiming to see tribesmen drag his body along the beach and bury it.
Despite the efforts of Indian authorities, his body was never recovered. Seven people, including the fisherman who helped him access the island, were arrested.
Just weeks before his death, Chau – who had a passion for hiking, camping and travelling – had posted a series of pictures on Instagram. One was a selfie with a fisherman on a boat at sea. He captioned the pictures: “Kayaking the tropics in this endless summer.”
John Allen Chau posted a smiling selfie on Instagram just weeks before the tribe killed him (Instagram/@johnachau)
It is the final known photo of the American.
Following his death, Chau’s family released a statement, which said: “We recently learned from an unconfirmed report that John Allen Chau was reported killed in India while reaching out to members of the Sentinelese Tribe in the Andaman Islands.
“He loved God, life, helping those in need and had nothing but love for the Sentinelese people.
“We forgive those reportedly responsible for his death. We also ask for the release of those friends he had in the Andaman Islands.”
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The idea of visiting an island full of your favourite pet animals seems like a dream to be honest.
You know, like ‘puppy island’ or ‘bunny island’… that would be cute right?
Except this real spot nicknamed Snake Island is so deadly no human is ever allowed to visit.
Queimada Grande might only have an area of 106 acres, but it’s home to around 4,000 snakes – the equivalent of between three and five of the things per square metre.
And they’re not just harmless grass snakes like we have in the UK or the kind you’d want to hold around your neck like Britney Spears, they’re golden lancehead vipers.
Sounds scary, right?
Critically endangered, the snake is one of the most venous snakes in the world.
The golden lancehead only lives on Snake Island, about 30 miles off the coast of Brazil.
caio acquesta/Getty Images
While it primarily eats birds, the potent venom can be lethal to humans, with the possibility to kill you within just an hour.
So, it’s hardly a disappointment that people aren’t allowed to visit the place for the sake of both them and the creatures – because who wants their flesh melted by a snake?
The snakes became trapped on Quiemada Grande thousands of years ago following the end of the last ice age, as the rising sea levels disconnected the island from Brazil’s mainland.
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SCIENTISTS ALARMED BY FOOTAGE AFTER ATTACHING CAMERAS TO POLAR BEARS
Authorities only let a small handful of scientists visit Snake Island a year but a 9 News reporter was previously given unprecedented access for 60 Minutes and was joined by a medical team.
Speaking to news.com.au, Tara Brown said she was warned not to go by local fishermen.
She said: “When we’re speaking to local fisherman, they told us, ‘That’s not a good idea, you don’t want to go there’. There are legends about a whole family being killed there, and of pirates burying treasure on the island and the snakes being put there to protect the treasure.
9 News
“The fishermen said they never went there, or they would die.”
As the years have gone by, the venom of the snakes there has actually evolved to be even more deadly.
Brown explained: “They’re different to their mainland cousins in that they’re five times more venomous and they are among the top 10 most poisonous snakes in the world.
“They hunt and eat birds. Not the local birds, who have become too smart for them, but larger migratory birds, boobies, who come by on their migration. And the snakes’ venom has become more potent because their prey is bigger.
“It’s an incredibly interesting evolutionary experiment for scientists to observe. This is a laboratory in the wild, if you like. You see evolution at play.”
Yep, sure, sounds very interesting but I don’t think I’d be stepping foot near them.
A man snuck onto ‘one of the most dangerous island’s in the world’ which is strictly off-limits to tourists due to it’s high concentration of venomous snakes.
Ilha da Queimada Grande, more commonly referred to as Snake Island, is located off the coast of São Paulo in Brazil and is considered too dangerous for humans.
Despite being just 106-acres in size, the island is home to an estimated 4,000 snakes, which includes the highly venomous golden lancehead. A critically endangered species, the lancehead has highly potent venom that can kill a human within an hour.
Take a look at footage captured from the island below:
Due to the island’s number of highly venomous snakes it’s no surprise that visiting Snake Island is forbidden, with the exception of researchers and scientists who have gained special permission.
The warnings haven’t deterred brave (or reckless, you decide) travellers from attempting to visit, with one man even recording his trip for YouTube.
Infamous ‘danger tourist’ Lord Miles – real name Miles Routledge – thought the perilous journey to Snake Island would make seriously good content and decided to try his luck.
Getting to the island was no easy feat, with Miles and his team having to evade the Brazilian coast guard before even arriving.
Once he made landfall, Miles wasted no time in embarking on a jungle route up to an abandoned lighthouse, which he called one of the ‘most dangerous’ on the island.
Thankfully Miles decided to bring some form of protective gear – medieval inspired armour of course – before saying a prayer and setting off to meet his fate.
“This isn’t clickbait, I’m on one of the most dangerous island in the world,” he told the camera.
“Many have been to this island and very few have gotten out unfortunately.”
The journey to the lighthouse, where locals allege that the occupants inside died from snake bites, saw Miles trudging through overgrown grass.
(YouTube/@Lord Miles)
Despite the island’s notorious reputation, Miles encountered very few snakes on his journey. In-fact it seemed like he was more at risk of suffering from dehydration rather than a snake bite.
“It’s not that bad, for the second most dangerous island in the world,” he told the camera at one point.
Fortunately luck also seemed to be on Miles’ side as he managed to make it off the island alive – but don’t take that as an invitation to visit the island for yourself.
Here are the haunting final words of a pilot who made the fatal decision to allow his children to sit in the cockpit and pretend to fly the plane.
On 23 March, 1994 one of the most tragic, and arguably avoidable, crashes happened which caused the deaths of all 75 people onboard.
Aeroflot Flight 593 was heading from Moscow to Hong Kong on a late night flight. Onboard was captain Andrew Viktorovich Danilov, an experienced pilot who’d clocked around 9,500 hours of flight experience alongside first officer Igor Vasilyevich Piskaryov and relief captain Yaroslav Vladimirovich Kudrinsky.
While the three pilots were more than experienced to handle the controls of a commercial jet, none of the men could account for human error caused by children sitting at the plane’s controls.
The tragedy occurred on an Aeroflot flight (JoanValls/Urbanandsport /NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The flight was first international trip for Kudrinsky’s kids Yana, 13, and Eldar, 15, with the pilot wanting to mark the children’s first trip by allowing them into the cockpit to see where their father worked.
Despite being against regulations, the crew onboard believed it would be safe as the plane was on autopilot, which meant the children wouldn’t actually be in control of aircraft.
First into her father’s seat was Yana, who sat down in-front of the controls as around 00:43am and pretended to ‘fly’ the plane while it was on autopilot.
Kudrinsky’s son was next into the chair and was allowed to move the controls and pretend to fly the plane at around 00:51am.
Disaster would strike just under four minutes later.
At 00:54am, the teenager manipulated the control stick for over 30 seconds with inputs up to 10 kilograms, which contradicted the input made by the autopilot to keep the aircraft stable and straight, which then changed the flight control settings to manual.
A slight indicator light flashed up to inform the crew that Eldar was now in partial control of the plane, however the crew weren’t used to non-soviet aircraft and failed to notice the warning.
The aircraft then entered a bank, with the autopilot unable to maintain altitude due to the angle of the wings.
Captain Kudrinsky then ordered the co-pilot to take control as he got his son away from his seat so he could take command of the aircraft.
“Eldar, get away. Go to the back, go to the back Eldar! You see the danger don’t you,” Kudrinsky could be heard saying on cockpit voice recording.
“Go away, go away Eldar! Go away, go away. I tell you to go away!”
The pilots then attempted to regain control of the aircraft and were nearly successful in doing so, however they accidentally over corrected and sent the plane into an almost vertical climb, stalling and sending it into a spin.
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The pilots attempted to regain control, but were ultimately unable to do so (YouTube/MorfoAtari)
It began to lose altitude, and eventually descended beneath the minimum safe altitude for the flight at the section of its route over mountainous terrain.
At 00:59, air traffic control in nearby Novokuznetsk were waiting for a position update through radio transmission from the flight, but it never came, as the flight stopped appearing on their radar screens.
It turns out that at 00:58, just two minutes and six seconds after the events unfolded, Flight 593 crashed in a flat altitude at high vertical speed, estimated to be around 160mph, in the Kuznetsk Alatau Mountain range in the Kemerovo Oblast region of southern Russia.
The aircraft was destroyed, killing everyone onboard.
Aeroflot initially attempted to deny the pilots were at fault, however the above transcript would ultimately be published, confirming the crash was human error.
The first words from one of the surviving members of doomed Jeju Air flight 7C2216 have been revealed after it crash landed at Muan International Airport on Sunday morning (29 December).
After travelling from Bnagkok Thailand, the Boeing 737-800 made an emergency landing in Muan, South Korea, 180 miles from Seoul, at 9:03 local time.
News footage of the Jeju Air aircraft skidding dangerously down the runway with no landing gear deployed showed how terrifying the situation was, before it collided with a concrete wall and burst into a giant fireball.
Eyewitnesses said that they heard a ‘series of explosions’ as well as ‘metallic scraping’.
The first words from survivors of the wreckage have been revealed (JUNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images)
It has been reported that over 1,500 emergency personnel have been deployed in recovery efforts, as some have been searching for parts of the plane and bodies of passengers.
A number of them rushed to the crash site soon after, though it was reported by the BBC that only two of the 181 passengers and crew onboard survived, with both being crew members.
The South Korean National Fire Agency reported that the flight crew members, a man and a woman, survived, as they were found in the tail side of the plane and were swiftly taken to hospital.
The tail was the only recognisable part of the aircraft following the crash.
According to local news outlet Yonhap, the man is awake and ‘fully able to communicate’.
What were his first words?
When he was rescued and taken to hospital, the first thing the flight attendant, identified as Lee, said to doctors, was: “What happened?”
The crew member also asked: “Why am I here?”
He was said to look disoriented, and didn’t describe his injuries.
Lee, 32, clarified that he had his seatbelt on, and couldn’t remember events after the plane’s landing.
Authorities are still searching for debris and missing bodies (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)
A hospital official explained what the problem may be: “It seems he was in a near-panic state, possibly worried about the safety of the plane and passengers.”
He was stationed at the rear of the plane to help passengers, though Yonhap report that he sustained a fractured left shoulder and head injuries while remaining conscious.
What about the other survivor?
The surviving woman has been identified as Kwon, a 25-year-old flight attendant that also cannot remember the crash.
Currently being treated at Mokpo Central Hospital, she told doctors that she had pain in her abdomen, ankle and head.
She also had a scalp laceration and a fractured ankle, according to hospital staff, who explained: “While her life is not in danger, we haven’t had time to ask her about the crash.”
