An elderly Croatian, retired music teacher Frane Selak, considered the luckiest person on earth, decided to give away the amount he had previously won in the lottery to friends and relatives.
In June 2003, he won the equivalent of £600,000 in the lottery and celebrated his fifth marriage to a woman 20 years his junior. Then he said: "Now I will enjoy my life. I feel born again. I know God has been watching over me all these years."
Now Selak decided that “money cannot buy happiness” and returned to a modest life.
He sold his luxurious home on a private island, gave the money to family and friends and returned to his modest home in Petrinja, in the center of the country, south of Zagreb.
He spent the rest of his winnings on replacement surgery. hip joint, to make their married life more pleasant, and perhaps a resident of Catholic Croatia will erect a chapel in honor of the Virgin Mary to thank the Mother of God for his good fortune.
"All I need at my age is Katarina. Money wouldn't change anything," said the pensioner, now 81.
“I never thought that I would be lucky to survive all these encounters with death. Even for the first time I thought that I would be unlucky... I always thought that I was unlucky if such situations happened to me at all, but is it worth it? telling people what they don’t want to believe,” Selak commented on seven mortal dangers that he survived unharmed.
The Seven Disasters of Frane Selak
Train and icy river
The first time the Croatian was truly lucky was in 1962, when the train on which he was traveling from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik derailed and fell into an icy river.
Then seventeen people drowned, and Frane Selak almost died with them. He managed to swim ashore, suffering from severe hypothermia, shock, bruises and a broken arm.
Airplane and haystack
A year later, he fell out of a DC-8 plane between Zagreb and Rijeka when the plane's door suddenly burst open during the flight. As a result of this disaster, 19 people died. Selak landed on a haystack and suffered shock, bruises and cuts.
Bus and river
In 1966, the bus in which he was traveling to the city of Split tilted and fell into the river. Four people died. Selak swam ashore with cuts, bruises and, this time, even more shock.
burning car
Disaster number four happened to the Croatian in 1970. The car he was driving on the highway suddenly caught fire. Selak managed to get out of the car a few seconds before the gas tank exploded.
After this incident, his friend began to call the lucky Croatian “Lucky”. “He told me then,” says Selak, “You can look at everything that happens to you from two sides. Either you are the unluckiest person in the world, or the luckiest." I preferred the latter."
Hair and a faulty pump
Three years later, Frane Selak suddenly lost almost all the hair on his head. Leaky fuel pump sprayed gasoline directly onto the hot engine of his car, fanning the flames through the breather.
In 1995, Frane Selak's sixth disaster occurred. On one of the streets of Zagreb he was accidentally hit by a bus. The lucky Croatian escaped with a “slight fright” this time too - he received minor bruises and inevitable shock.
UN truck and mountain gorge
The following year, Selak was driving his car in the mountains when suddenly, as he rounded a bend, he saw a UN truck barreling towards him.
His Skoda crashed into a road fence, broke through it and hung on the edge of a cliff. Selak managed to jump out of the car at the last moment. After a short flight, he landed on a tree, from where he was able to follow the flight of his car into a mountain gorge, which exploded 90 meters below him.
Frane Selak married unsuccessfully four times. After his lottery win, he noted philosophically, "I guess my marriages have been disasters, too." Apparently, the fifth marriage, concluded after winning the lottery, remains successful.
A person with the opposite sign is also known: the unluckiest Briton, 58-year-old farm worker Mick Vilari, received a total of more than 30 injuries, including broken 15 bones. But he is apparently more successful in marriage - at least the chroniclers of Mika Vilari’s life do not report any divorces. "Life around him is full of adventures. If something is going to happen, it only happens to Mick... He's just one of those people... You know, when his friends want to know if the fence has been missed electricity, they always ask Mick to touch. But nothing unsettles him, and he never blames others for his failures. His family misses him, especially his grandchildren. I miss him - he's mine stone wall. I can’t find a place for myself without him,” said his wife.
Our life consists of ups and downs. But some people simply don't notice those moments when something goes wrong. Fate kisses them on the forehead and, no matter what they do, they will win anyway.
10. Terri Preece
A woman bought oysters at Tesco and found a pearl in one of them! Hundreds of people shop at Tesco every day, but it's unlikely that any of them would be lucky enough to discover such a treasure.
Terry wasn't sure what to do with her find and ended up turning it into a stunning ring worth £500 (almost €620).
The woman claims that she never thought that this could happen, but she really loves oysters and buys them all the time.
9. Couple from Sierra Nevada (USA)
These people do not reveal their names because they have found the largest treasure in the last 100 years and even more!
The couple was walking in their backyard when they suddenly discovered something suspicious. It was a rusty tin can filled with coins.
They dug up several boxes of 19th century coins worth $100 million! This is the largest gold coin hoard ever excavated in the United States! And the coins will go on sale soon.
8. Colin and Chis Weir
This couple won the biggest jackpot in Europe. One day in July 2011, they were returning from the grocery store and decided to buy a lottery ticket.
As the couple later admitted, this was not their first attempt to win money in the lottery. But it was definitely their day! The purchased ticket brought them an insane winnings of 20 million euros! The couple spent part of the amount on their dream vacation.
7. Charles Wells
Over 100 years ago, before the best New Zealand online casinos existed, people went to real casinos to try their luck.
Mr. Wells loved roulette. He spent every weekend playing roulette, and one day his lucky day came! He took several glasses of whiskey and bet everything he had on one bet. Incredibly, he won $1 million!
However, that was not all! He was so lucky that day that he decided to take full advantage of his luck! Two hours later, Charles won another million at roulette on the same table!
6. Maarten de Jonge
This Dutch athlete was born under a lucky star! Can you imagine that one person had tickets for both the infamous flights MH370 and MH17? But at the very last moment his plans changed.
Marten was planning to meet his team in Malaysia and booked a ticket on flight MH17, which was subsequently shot down over Ukraine. But the day before departure, he decided to go on a weekend getaway and changed his ticket to flight MH370. The plane disappeared without a trace. But Martin was not on board because he changed his ticket again at the last minute.
5. Frane Selak
This is a man who literally went through fire and water. He has looked death in the eye 7 times since 1957.
He was traveling on a bus that drowned in the river. After that, he was simply haunted by a series of deadly accidents: he survived a plane crash by landing in a haystack, moved away from two exploding cars in time, got caught in a tree when his car fell off a cliff.
But even this will not be enough to prove its peculiarity. In 2003, he bought a lottery ticket, which brought him almost 750,000 euros.
4. Joan Ginther
A math teacher who can be called a lottery guru. She won the instant lottery (scratch cards) 4 times! And each of the winnings amounted to a six-figure sum! Her last lottery ticket brought her an incredible $10 million!
3. Jenny Marsey
For years, this woman tried to lose several kilograms. She wore size 20 (our size is 54) and thought it was too much.
But one day she thanked God for her curvaceous forms. One day, while the children were in the kitchen trying to make toast, a fire started. The woman arrived on time. She grabbed the first thing she could find in the clothes dryer - her size 20 undies - and put out the fire.
2. Tsutomu Yamaguchi
The man who survived! He is one of the few
Everything in life is relative. And even the luckiest people in the world are not always the happiest. Don't believe me? Let's see this using three different stories.
Frayn Selak. The luckiest man from Croatia
This lucky guy managed to survive terrible disasters. It all started in January 1962. music was traveling by train to Dubrovnik from Sarajevo. For unknown reasons, the train derailed at full speed. The situation was complicated by the fact that the ill-fated train plunged into icy waters river flowing along the tracks. This was the last trip for seventeen passengers. Frain escaped with hypothermia and a year later a new test awaited him. The door of the plane in which the unfortunate lucky man was flying was incredibly torn out at a great height. The only survivor was the hero of our story. All other air passengers died. Three years later, Selak survived a terrible car accident, again escaping with only a couple of abrasions. In 1970 and 1973, his car suddenly caught fire, but Frein didn’t care. In 1995, he was hit by a bus, but the man survived again. A year later, he ran off the road in a mountainous area. Safely clinging to a tree, Frein watched as his car exploded in flight into a bottomless abyss. Well, who doesn’t need to think about how to become lucky! The climax of the amazing events happening to this lucky guy was winning a million dollars.
The luckiest people in the world: Major Summerfold - the man chased by lightning
The first time a flash of lightning struck a young officer was in 1918. At the time of the tragedy, he was fighting on the fields of Finland. The lightning strike was so powerful that the major fell from his horse. The officer was paralyzed, but he managed to return to an active life. In 1924, Summerfold faced another test. He was struck by lightning for the second time while fishing. As a result, the right side of his body was completely immobilized. However, after two years he was so strong that he could take walks in the park. Who would have thought that while walking in the shade of the trees the ill-fated lightning would overtake him again! After this tragedy, Major never recovered. He died two years later. However, the story does not end there. The monument on his grave was completely destroyed... by a lightning strike!
John Line
This man can boast that he safely survived sixteen tragedies that directly threatened his life. The series of trials began in childhood. A boy falling from a tree. This is how he first found himself in the hospital. The day he was discharged, he was involved in an accident. And this happened right on the way home from the hospital. John also survived after a sudden mine collapse, lightning strike and fall into a manhole at work. It's no surprise that this man's nickname is Calamity. Once he was injured in two accidents at once. So, John fell off the cart and was then run over by a van!
As you can see, the luckiest people in the world are not such darlings of fate. You wouldn't want to be in their shoes, would you?
Top 5: the luckiest people in the world who escaped death
5 (100%) 2 votesYou never know how lucky you are until you come face to face with danger. These five people know own experience, what is the “breath of death” and miraculous deliverance. Here they are, five favorites of luck and very lucky people.
His story begins in the 1960s, when he was traveling on a train that derailed and fell into a river. It was the month of February, and Selak, unlike the other 17 passengers, remained alive, having escaped with a broken arm.
A year later, Selak was flying on a commercial airplane when the cabin doors depressurized and he, along with the other 19 passengers, was pulled from the plane. He was again the only survivor who was lucky enough to fall on a haystack.
Exactly a year later, Selak decided not to take risks and be closer to the ground, this time taking the bus. Perhaps he was no longer surprised when he found himself in the cold river again.
After all these “adventures”, and having avoided a couple more exploding cars, Frain received “compensation” from fate in the form of winning a lottery in the amount of one million dollars.
Timothy is a lucky hillbilly, for whom fortune has smiled all his life. Nature endowed him with business acumen and ingenuity, depriving him of any ability to study (Dexter did not even know how to write his name correctly).
His friends made fun of him, giving him incorrect or unsuccessful advice in terms of commerce, but in the end everything turned out just fine for Timati.
One such tip was to sell heat-retaining frying pans in Western India (a region with a warm climate), but the captain of his ship managed to sell the entire shipment as ladles for a growing molasses company, making a huge profit.
The second insidious advice was the idea of selling woolen mittens to the same company, which they bought and resold in Siberia. After Timati was persuaded to sell coal in Newport, famous for its coal mines, miners' strikes began in the city, and Timati made a small fortune for himself there.
At the age of 50, he published the book “What Smart People Don’t Know or the Simple Truth of Hillbillies.” At first he gave the book away for free, but soon a publishing house was found that printed his book eight times, despite the fact that the text of the book itself does not contain a single punctuation mark.
Usually people get into deadly troubles once in their lives, but this couple managed to be subjected to terrorist attacks three times! Their "lucky" story begins with the day when they walked around New York on a pleasant September morning, enjoying the view of the Twin Towers.
Four years later, they repeated their experience when there was a terrorist attack on a city street in London. public transport. And in conclusion, these two again found themselves in a “hot spot”, now in Mumbai.
Despite all the misadventures, this couple is very optimistic and looks to the future without fear.
This flight attendant disproved everything we know about gravity. When a terrorist attack occurred on board her plane, which had reached an altitude of 10 km, and the plane and its passengers were scattered in all directions.
Vesna miraculously discovered that she remained alive, having escaped with a broken jaw, both legs and spine. She was paralyzed for several years, but a series of successful operations put her back on her feet.
Now Vesna is also famous for having set a world record for a long jump without a parachute, which the title holder herself is not too happy about.
Tsutomu is one of the rare people who managed to witness two nuclear bombings in a row.
The first time, he was blinded and burned by a nuclear explosion in Hiroshima, being only 6 km from the epicenter of the explosion. He managed to get home the next day in Nagasaki, where a terrible déjà vu awaited him.
Tsutomu lived a long life, full of terrible events and memories, and never for a minute stopped fighting for nuclear disarmament of all countries. Relatives believed until the end that radiation sickness would bypass him, but at the age of 93, Tsutomu died of stomach cancer.
Inspired by the example of these people and knowing what they experienced, our daily problems seem not so global and catastrophic. We hope you learned something new and that our article was useful to you.
Surely many will agree that life is a complicated thing. No matter how trivial it may sound, it is true. Luck is our faithful assistant. For some, it helps them move forward career ladder, and some are more lucky in their personal lives. However, there is also luck, which many people consider simply a lucky coincidence, an accident. However, when a person’s life hangs by a thread, when one wrong step, one wrong movement or even a spoken word can become an early end to one’s stay in this world, absolutely everyone expects some kind of miracle, which is the above-mentioned luck. Few people manage to cheat death at least once. However, there are those who managed to fool the old woman with the scythe several times. Such people are often called “darlings of fortune.”
Frane Selak - an 88-year-old retired music teacher from Croatia, the hero of this article - belongs to such a small group of lucky people who succeeded. According to him, he managed to deceive fate 7 times, surviving several accidents and disasters, while escaping with only minor injuries. Some of the rescues were so miraculous and unimaginable that they ended up in the famous Guinness Book of Records. And in his old age, the reward for all the trials life presented to him was the large sum of money he won in the lottery. Why isn't he the luckiest person in the world?!
Frane Selak was born in 1929 in what was then Yugoslavia. The birth of the future lucky guy happened quite unexpectedly and in unusual place. The birth took place... in a boat during one of the child's father's fishing trips, which he often went on. The baby was also born at seven months old. The seaside holiday was immediately interrupted. The child's condition did not inspire optimism. The baby was born weak and was on the verge between life and death. The parents took the baby to the hospital, but they decided that the boy could not be saved. But the mother had no intention of parting with her newborn baby. She wrapped him in a shirt and took him to the church, sprinkling him with holy water. Only after this the child’s condition began to change. positive side. Thus, the hand of Lady Luck already touched the shoulder of the future unlucky lucky man. Since childhood, Frane was interested in music, so the choice future profession was, naturally, connected precisely with this sphere of art. He became a music teacher and director of a children's choir. However, fate prepared for him many deadly trials, which certainly did not allow him to call his life boring.
Frane Selak's games with death began in 1962. In January of that year, he was traveling on a train heading from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik. Due to icing on the railway tracks (it was bitterly cold), the train derailed and crashed into an ice-covered river. 17 people became victims of this disaster. Selak miraculously managed to survive; he escaped with hypothermia, bruises and a broken arm. In addition, he saved the life of one elderly passenger.
Another unpleasant incident in the life of a Croatian music teacher was an incident on an airplane in 1963. What happened then? A Douglas DC 8 jet airliner was flying from Zagreb to Rijeka. Frane, not indifferent to the fair sex, decided to have an affair with the flight attendant, unfastening his seat belt. Suddenly the cabin depressurized and the plane door flew open. It turned out that due to dense fog, the Douglas DC 8 accidentally touched a mountain ledge, which is why the cabin door opened. Some of the passengers were sucked out, including the flight attendant with whom the music teacher wanted to get to know each other better. Lovelace Selak also fell out of the plane. 19 people became victims of this tragic incident. Frana was miraculously lucky enough to fall on a large haystack and escaped with fright and abrasions. The flight attendant was also lucky: she fell onto the leafy part of the tree. True, it was not possible to get to know the girl better. But he remained safe and sound. This amazing incident was included in the Guinness Book of Records.
The next “adventure” of the Croatian music teacher occurred in 1966. This time the trip on the bus, which was heading to the city of Split, was unsuccessful. The driver lost control and the bus crashed into the river. Four people became victims of this tragedy. Frana Selak managed to get out of the bus and reach the shore. And again he escaped with shock, bruises and abrasions.
After 3 previous unpleasant incidents, Frane Selak decided not to take any more risks and started driving his own Skoda car, believing that driving on his own would be safer. Do you think it worked this time? Not at all. In 1970, traveling by car turned into another unpleasant incident. On the highway, his car suddenly began to smoke and then completely caught fire. Frane, without hesitation, immediately rushed out of the car. Seconds later, he watched his car's gas tank explode. And once again I managed to escape with a few abrasions and a slight shock. Frane’s surprised friend, who learned about this incident, could not stay away and uttered a rather memorable phrase: “You are either the unluckiest or the luckiest person in the world!”
The next incident in the life of the unlucky lucky guy happened because of his own mistake. In 1973, there was an unsuccessful attempt to repair the car, as a result of which the fuel pump failed, and Selak was doused small portion fuel, which instantly ignited. Frane did not receive any severe burns, except for his burnt hair. Got off easy, as they say.
The next episode in the fate of “fortune’s favorite” is one that happens every day in the life of almost every ordinary citizen of our planet. The year was 1995. More than 20 years have passed since the last incident, and Frane Selak considered that the dark streak of incidents in his life had ended. But it was not there. This time in Zagreb he was accidentally hit by a bus. Fortunately for the 66-year-old Croatian, he again escaped with only abrasions and fear.
The last unpleasant incident in the life of the luckiest man in the world occurred in 1996. And again behind the wheel of the ill-fated Skoda car. This time Frane made a trip through the mountains, through a narrow gorge. Suddenly, after turning, he saw with horror that a UN peacekeeping truck was rushing towards him at high speed. Selak turned sharply to the side and crashed through the fence with his car. The car hung on the edge of a cliff. Horvath jumped out of the car just seconds before his car crashed to the bottom of the gorge, where it exploded. And this time it ended with fear and scratches. Frane Selaka's life was saved by the fact that the seat belt was not fastened.
Today, the luckiest man in the world is 88 years old. He is a retired music teacher and lives in the town of Petrinja, south of Zagreb. Life presented him with many unpleasant surprises. However, at the end of this path of “luck”, real luck awaited him. In 2003, Frane Selak decided to try his luck in the lottery. As a result, he hit the jackpot, winning an amount equal to $1 million. An unheard of reward for long trials by fate. Some would immediately run to put such money in the bank, while others would start spending it.
Frane Selak, who was 74 years old at that time, decided that he was too old to put money aside. In addition, the old Croatian was literally up to his neck in debt. And no one has canceled the passion for travel. Having paid off his debts, he spent most of the money on new house, a car and a boat, and also got married for the fifth time.
In 2010, tired of traveling, Frane returned to Petrinja, sold what he had bought earlier, had a hip replacement operation, and donated the remaining amount to charity. Today, the 88-year-old pensioner is again drowning in debt. However, the luckiest man in the world does not at all regret the money he wasted left and right. He considers that lucky win a kind of gift for the trials that he had to endure. Including for saving the life of an old woman when a train derailed in 1962.
As mentioned above, Frane Selak was never indifferent to the fairer sex. Just look at the incident on the plane, which only miraculously ended well for him. Not counting his numerous affairs, he was married four times, but all marriages ended in divorce after some time. The last, 5th marriage was concluded in old age, some time after that largest monetary win, and the man is still happy. His chosen one's name is Katarina. She is 20 years younger than Frane. The Croatian pensioner himself considers his wife the greatest success in his life.
