World's luckiest man who escaped death seven times won a $1 million lottery at 73

The concept of death is very tricky and it often catches people off guard. No matter how prepared they seem, it is always chilling to have a near-death experience. To trick death and get out of it is unimaginable, much less possible. However, an elderly man, Frano Selak has surprisingly done the same not once, twice, or thrice but 7 times, per BBC. The world is adamant about his title as the "luckiest" man and his story is surely a captivating one. While Selak’s life is defined by winning moments where he escaped death, he even won a lottery as a finishing touch, per Total Croatia. 

An octogenarian music teacher hailing from Croatia, Selak has had quite the experience with life and death. Starting way back in 1957, he had his near-death shock when he was traveling by bus and fell into a river. The driver had been drinking and nevertheless, the duo managed to escape and get out of the waters. The next bizarre experience took place when Selak was traveling by train. A boulder on the tracks caused the train to crash into a river, drowning 17 passengers. However, Selak was fortunately not one of them. He managed to confuse death and make his way out along with another acquaintance. 

Most of his near-death experiences seemed to revolve around transportation and kept getting crazier each time. His third baffling blunder involved a flight that malfunctioned midway and crashed. Selak, at the time, was sucked out of the plane after the door broke and fell from 800m high, miraculously landing into a haystack. Though one cannot fathom the experience, the man lived it. Selak’s next two experiences involved a car. Both times, the vehicle somehow caught fire and the man escaped with few injuries, seconds before it could catch fire.

The last two experiences involved missed accidents on the road where the man nearly escaped each time, driving death crazy. His last fateful experience was in 1996, making the number of times he was saved, a lucky 7. Selak’s life had, by this point, been characterized by a thin line that divided his fate from lucky to unlucky. A few years later, the then 73-year-old got lucky in a lottery, bagging 6.5 million kuna, which is a little over a million dollars. Selak was, at this point, defined by his luck. His life’s trajectory revolved around these fateful encounters and he was content and easy-going about them all till the end of his life. The man passed away at the age of 86, but his story echoes with a mind-boggling stature. 

This & That Visuals, a cartoon page on YouTube, picked up Selak’s story and converted it into a short cartoon. They depicted as best as they could the seven rollercoaster experiences of Selak’s life. A viewer, @Exe244, wrote, “So basically, Death pulled off a bunch of assassination attempts, but failed and paid Frane $1 million.” @NaBeHobby exclaimed, “There definitely needs to be a Hollywood movie about this man.”