Frane Selak

Frane Selak (born 1929) is a Croatian music teacher who has escaped death seven times, and afterward won the lottery in 2003, prompting journalists to dub him "the world's luckiest man", and "world's luckiest unluckiest man".

Brushes with death

Selak's supposed brushes with death started in January 1962 when he was riding a train through a cold, rainy canyon and the train flipped off the tracks and crashed in a river. Someone pulled Selak to safety, while 17 other passengers drowned. Selak suffered a broken arm and hypothermia. The next year, during his first and only plane ride, he was blown out of a malfunctioning plane door and landed in a haystack; the plane crashed, killing 19 people. However, there is no report of any plane crash in Croatia in 1963. Three years after that, in 1966, a bus that he was riding skidded off the road and into a river, drowning four passengers. Selak swam to shore with a few cuts and bruises.

In 1968 Selak was teaching his youngest son how to hold a gun when the safety trigger was accidentally off and Selak managed to shoot himself in one of his testicles. He was taken to hospital where the casing from the bullet was found, and his testicle had to be removed.