50 years ago Shavarsh Karapetyan saved people from a sunken trolleybustranslated

September 16, 2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the feat of multiple diving champion and world record holder Shavarsh Karapetyan, who saved people from a sunken trolleybus.

This happened on September 16, 1976. In Yerevan, a trolleybus driving along a dam fell into the water. 92 passengers were buried alive at a depth of 10 meters. All of them were doomed to inevitable death, if not for one circumstance: it was at this time that the multiple world champion in scuba diving Shavarsh Karapetyan was making a training run along the lake.

Diving into the water, muddied by the fall of the trolleybus, he smashed the rear window with his feet and began to pull out the unconscious passengers. More than 20 minutes in ice water. 20 lives saved. In fact, he pulled more people out of the trolleybus, but not everyone was saved.

When Shavarsh once again surfaced, passers-by crowded on the dam saw that his entire body was tormented by fragments of a broken window.

Then to the question - what was the worst thing then? – Shavarsh replied: “I knew for sure that, despite all my training, I would only be enough for a certain number of dives. There at the bottom there was zero visibility, so I...