In May 1996, Weathers was one of eight clients being guided on Mount Everest by celebrated guide Rob Hall of Adventure Consultants. However, Weathers, who had recently had radial keratotomy (surgical procedure to correct vision) surgery, soon discovered that he was blinded by the effects of high altitude and overexposure to ultraviolet radiation, high altitude effects which had not been well documented at the time. On May 10, the day of the summit assault, Hall - after being told Weathers could not see, wanted Beck to descend to Camp IV immediately. Weathers, however, believed his vision might improve when the sun came out, so Hall had him promise to wait on the Balcony (27,000 ft, on the 29,000 foot Everest) until Hall came back down to descend with him.

Hall, up high waiting for another client to reach the summit, never came down to assist Weathers and later died high up on the mountain. Weathers eventually began descending with guide Michael Groom, who was short-roping him. When the blizzard struck, Weathers and 10 other climbers became disoriented in the storm, could not find Camp IV, and staggered around the South Col for several hours. By the time there was a break in the storm, Weathers had been so weakened that he and three other men and women were left there so the others could summon help. Anatoli Boukreev, a guide on another expedition led by Scott Fischer, came and rescued several climbers, but during that time, Weathers had stood up and disappeared into the night. The next day, another client on Hall's team, Stuart Hutchison, and two Sherpas arrived to check on the status of Weathers and fellow client Yasuko Namba. Believing Weathers and Namba were both near death and would not make it off the mountain alive, Hutchison and the others left them and returned to Camp IV.

Weathers spent the night in an open bivouac, in a blizzard, with his face and hands exposed. When he awakened, he managed to walk down to Camp IV on his own! His fellow climbers said that his frozen hand and nose looked and felt as if they were made of porcelain, and they did not expect him to survive. With that assumption, they only tried to make him comfortable until he died, but he survived another freezing night alone in a tent, unable to drink, eat, or keep himself covered with the sleeping bags he was provided with. His cries for help could not be heard above the blizzard, and his companions were surprised to find him alive and coherent the following day.

Weathers was later helped to walk, on frozen feet, to a lower camp, where he was a subject of one of the highest altitude medical evacuations ever performed by helicopter. Following his helicopter evacuation, he had his right arm amputated halfway between the elbow and wrist. All four fingers and the thumb on his left hand were removed, as well as parts of both feet. His nose was amputated and reconstructed with tissue from his ear and forehead. Weathers’s epic survival story was later documented in a feature film titled Everest.

7. Quora user Smit Anarkat talks about the greatest miracle of them all



"India! Its wealth disappears miraculously. People vote for the same corrupt politicians who have looted them for years. (Some call it foolishness of voters, I count it as a miracle). Every now & then a scandal comes in to limelight and gullible people fall for it. No other country has people finding comfort in chaos."