19. Capping Off a Miraculous Escape Streak by Winning the Lottery
Harrowing as the 1960s had been for Frane Selak, the 1970s were no better. The decade began with his car erupting into flames while he was driving. He jumped out just before the fuel tank exploded. In 1973, a bad pump sprayed his new car’s engine with hot oil while he was driving. It caught fire, and shot flames into the passenger compartment. He escaped with no worse than singed hair.
The 1980s were uneventful, but then in 1995, Selak was hit by a bus. He escaped with only minor injuries. The following year, he barely avoided a head-on collision with a truck on a mountain road – but only by swerving into and through a guardrail. His car fell 300 feet down a gorge. Luckily for him, he was not wearing a seatbelt: he was flung out the door, and in cartoon fashion, managed to hang on to a tree branch, while his car was totaled and incinerated below. Then in 2003, fate finally decided to do Selak a solid with no strings attached: he won €800,000 in the lottery – equivalent to U$1.1 million.