We use the expression ‘lucky dog’ way too loosely nowadays. We think getting a good deal online, a nice vacation, or a good-looking partner is being lucky. We thought so too, before we came across this. Your definition of luck will change altogether after reading this. These are, the luckiest people to ever exist on Earth.
1. Joan R. Ginther - Fourth time's a charm.
Did you know that the chance of you winning a lottery is 1 in 200 million? In fact, you are more likely to die getting struck by an asteroid than win a lottery. How would you explain Joan R. Ginther’s situation then? She won a lottery not once, but an unimaginable 4 times! Her life changed when she first won a cool $5.4 million, only to win $2 million more 10 years later. It doesn’t end there. 2 years later she won $3 million, and a staggering $10 million in 2008!
2. Tsutomu Yamaguchi – The man who cheated death by a nuclear attack. Twice.
It was during World War II that Tsutomu was an employee of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. During one of his work visits to Hiroshima was when the first nuclear bomb dropped in 1945. Blessed, though injured by the blast, he somehow managed to survive. He quickly returned to Nagasaki to his family and started work on the 9thof August, the day the second nuclear attack happened. He miraculously survived this too.
Later in life, Yamaguchi became a vocal proponent of nuclear disarmament. In an interview, Mr Yamaguchi said, “The reason that I hate the atomic bomb is because of what it does to the dignity of human beings.” During a telephone interview he said, “I can’t understand why the world cannot understand the agony of the nuclear bombs. How can they keep developing these weapons?” He also wrote a book about his experiences in the late 1980s.
In March 2009, Japan officially recognised Yamaguchi as a survivor of both blasts. He is now the only person officially recognised as surviving two nuclear bomb explosions.
Mr. Yamaguchi lived to a ripe old age of 93 and died on January 4th, 2010, at his home in Nagasaki.
3. Bill Morgan – Back from the dead.
Accidents can happen at any given point of time. For Australian Bill Morgan, it was when he was tragically crushed when his car met with a truck in an accident. Dead for more than 14 minutes, he somehow managed to not only survive, but also came away from 12 days of coma, even after his family removed the life support. Crazy? That’s not the end of it. To celebrate the new life that was granted to him, he bought a ‘Scratch It’ card and won a $27,000 car! To document his incredible story, a local news channel asked him to re-enact the winning moment by scratching another card, only for him to win $250,000 again during the live reenactment! Nuts.
4. Frane Selak – 7 times lucky, and then again.
Known as the luckiest man to ever live, Croatian Frane Selak cheated death not once or twice, but an astonishing 7 TIMES! Selak’s brushes with death started in January 1962 when the train he was travelling in flipped off the tracks, and crashed in a freezing canyon river. Bystanders pulled him to the shore, while 17 other passengers drowned to their deaths. Selak just suffered a broken arm and hypothermia.
A year later, during his first and only plane ride, Frane was blown out of a malfunctioning plane door, and as luck would have it, landed on a haystack. The plane crashed, killing 19 people.
Three years later, in ’66, a bus he was travelling in skid off the road, into a river, drowning four passengers. Selak, however, swam safely to the shore with only a few cuts and bruises.
Two years after, Selak was trying to teach his youngest son how to hold a gun. Selak hadn’t realised that the safety trigger was accidentally off and somehow managed to shoot himself in the testicles. Selak’s testicles had to be removed, but he luckily survived, again.
In 1970, and 1973 he got into accidents where his car caught fire. Apart from singed hair, Selak managed to get out of the situation absolutely unharmed, again.
Later, in 1995, Selak was struck by a bus in Zagreb, but only sustained minor injuries.
A year later, he eluded a head-on collision with a United Nations truck on a blind mountain curve by swerving into a guardrail, which couldn’t hold on its own and gave way under the impact force of the car. He was not wearing a seat-belt at this point of time, and was ejected from the car when the door flew open. Selak saw his death along with the car plummet down about 300 ft into a gorge. You’d think cheating death an inhuman 7 times would be enough to be on this list, but there’s more.
In 2003, two days after his 73rd birthday, Frane Selak won a staggering $1.1 million in the Croatian National Lottery! While he bought two houses and a boat with it, Frane also used the money to buy a small chapel to thank the Lord for all of his fortune. After $1.1 million and the 7 near-death experiences, he better be thankful.
5. Maarten de Jonge – The man who cheated death twice in 4 months.
It is known that your intuition can give you a sense of what’s going to happen in the near future. But how do you explain the case of Dutch cyclist Maarten de Jonge? Maarten cheated death twice in 4 months! He was scheduled to be on the MH370, the flight that went missing and was never found, in March 2014. He had also booked a seat in the MH17 flight which later crashed, only to reschedule it at the last moment.
6. Concetta Antico – The artist tetrachromat.
So a tetrachromat will be able to see, roughly 100 times more colours than an average human being.The human eye is stacked with millions of cone-shaped cells that help us recognise colours. For the normal kind like us, there are three types of cones which allow vision for about one million distinctive colours. Birds, insects, fishes and reptiles have a fourth type of cone cell that extends their colour perception, making them see the UV range as well. Although evolution has mostly scrubbed that fourth cone from the mammalian lineage, there is evidence that a small group of humans may have a genetic variant that allows for tetrachromacy.
Concetta Antico is a tetrachromat. “It’s shocking how little colour people see in their lives.” Says Antico. The fact that she’s the only one (one of the handful) in the entire world who sees the world a lot more vividly than the others, makes her a really lucky person. When she looks at a leaf, she sees much more than just green. “Around the edge I’ll see orange or red or purple in the shadow; you might see dark green, but I’ll see violet, turquoise, blue,” she said. “It’s like a mosaic of color.”
Deciding to show how she sees the world, Concetta decided to be a painter. She conjures masterpieces in one sitting. All her paintings are insanely colorful, and feature shades you wouldn't generally expect to see. Concetta, to me, is even luckier than Frane.
Deciding to show how she sees the world, Concetta decided to be a painter. She conjures masterpieces in one sitting. All her paintings are insanely colorful, and feature shades you wouldn't generally expect to see. Concetta, to me, is even luckier than Frane.
7. Fidel Castro - The man who cannot be killed.
Fidel has survived his cigar being poisoned, exploding cigars, radio laced with LSD, hidden poisonous hypodermic needles filled with lethal concoctions, among a lot more things.When you are hated and loved equally by millions across your country, an assassination attempt should shock you. But Cuba’s counter intelligence agency has estimated that Fidel Castro has survived over 630 assassination attempts! Six hundred and thirty. A number of these being planned by the U.S CIA, numerous mafia members, and his own mistress among many, many others.
8. Nichiren - The man who survived a beheading.
Nichiren was a prominent 12th century monk who was sentenced to execution for having written a prophecy that the Japanese authorities felt was subversive, and undermining their power. As pure luck would have it, Nichiren managed to escape his own beheading when the executioner was struck and killed by a lightening bolt when he raised his sword. He was later released by the authorities due to the weird circumstances.
Would this be an opportune moment to wish you luck?