Frane "Lucky" Selak

According to several news reports I've been reading, this man deserves the 'Luckiest Man in the World' award. A 76 year old Croatian man, he has survived numerous life-threatening situations and emerged relatively unscathed and very much alive. A listing of his exploits follows:

• 1962. Our hero is on a train en route to Sarajevo. The train jumps the rails and lands in a river. Seventeen people drown. Frane escapes with hypothermia and a broken arm.
• 1963. Our hero is on an airplane to visit his ailing mother. The emergency door bursts open and everybody dies. Except, of course, for Frane, who emerges relatively unscathed with cuts and bruises after landing in a haystack.
• 1966. This time, it's a bus, which swerves into a river, killing four.
• 1970. Driving in his Skoda, our hero realizes that his car is on fire. He escapes his car mere moments before the flames reach the fuel tank, causing it to explode.
• 1973. A different car for Frane was in order. However, it was not to last long, as his Wartburg's faulty fuel pump puts gasoline over the hot engine, causing our hero to lose much of his hair in the ensuing flames.
• 1995. Our hero is walking in Zagreb when he is knocked down by a bus. Again, only minor injuries are sustained by Frane.
• 1996. Our foolhardy hero is once again driving a Skoda on a winding road in the mountains of Croatia. This time, there are no fires, just a UN truck headed right for him. Frane gets out of the present danger just in time by swerving out of the way. As they say, out of the frying pan, into the fire, and so it was for Frane, who had to jump out of his car, landing in a tree. His Skoda was not so lucky, and ended up exploding 300 feet below him.

Upon hearing of Frane, one's impression is that he must have some sort of dangerous occupation to be in such recurring danger. Disappointment and surprise reign supreme when one learns that he is a music teacher. He has also 'survived' four marriages and subsequent divorces.

The icing on the cake? He recently (2003) won the lottery, in one of his first tickets bought in decades, for a cool $1,010,000. He also proposed to his hopefully fifth, and last wife, a woman 20 years his junior.