The Man Who Cheated Death Seven Times. Not only that, he also won the lottery

In the realm of statistics, some people are born under a lucky star, while others seem cursed by fate. Then there is Frane Selak, the Croatian music teacher who spent forty years oscillating violently between the two. Widely known as the world’s “luckiest unlucky man,” Selak survived seven catastrophic accidents that should have claimed his life, only to end his journey with a multimillion-dollar lottery jackpot.

Selak’s brush with the afterlife began in 1962 when a train he was riding plunged into a freezing river. Seventeen passengers perished; Selak swam to shore with a broken arm. A year later, during his first-ever plane ride, a door blew off the aircraft. While nineteen others fell to their deaths, Selak was sucked out of the cabin and landed miraculously in a haystack, waking up in a hospital with minor injuries.

The decades that followed played out like an action movie. He survived a bus plunging into a river in 1966, two separate cars that exploded while he was driving them in the 1970s, and being struck by a city bus in 1995. His final escape occurred in 1996, when he drove off a 300-foot cliff to avoid a head-on collision. Not wearing a seatbelt, he was thrown from the car and managed to cling to a tree branch, watching his vehicle explode in the canyon below.

After a lifetime of surviving the impossible, the universe finally offered a peace treaty. In 2003, at the age of 73, Selak bought his first lottery ticket in decades and won approximately $1.1 million.

His story remains a fascinating study in perspective. Was he the unluckiest man for being involved in such horrors, or the luckiest for surviving them? Selak ultimately chose the latter, giving away most of his wealth to live a quiet, grateful life. He proved that while you cannot control the disasters fate throws your way, you can certainly survive them—sometimes with a little help from a haystack.