When Death Hates You: The Story of the Luckiest Man Ever - Frane Selak

Frane Selak is may well be luckiest person in history, and his friends call him Mr. Lucky.

Over several decades Frane had seven different brushes with death but walked away unscathed each time. Then just to prove that he was truly exceptional, frane won lottery in 2003. His life has been filled with extreme highs and lows.

The 89-year-old music teacher chooses to remain positive accepting that he is indeed the luckiest person ever to live.

The story all began in a suburb of Zagreb Croatia where he was born on June 14, 1929 and married five times. He was not from a rich family but he had a profound love of music and his family was able to send him to a conservatory in high school to study both the piano and the violin. At the time Croatia was a part of Yugoslavia and frane lived through several socially repressive regimes. In addition to the second world war, he survived the bloody Balkan Wars which were the most deadly in Europe since World War 2. Many would say that these facts make him extremely lucky, but we're just getting started with his story.

His first brush with death came when he was already 33 years old. While riding the rails from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik Frank’s train catapulted into a river bursting through the ice and capsizing most of the train. In that accident, 17 passengers were killed, but Selak survived. He was able to swim to shore with nothing but a broken arm and hypothermia. But for his troubles, after a few months, Selak was perfectly healthy again, but this harrowing event was just a drop in the ocean compared to what was in store for him next.

Frank Selak had never been on a plane before, but as the saying goes “desperate times call for desperate measures”. In 1963, Frank Selak received word that his mother was ill making him determined to immediately fly from Zagreb to Regina. He then contacted an airline to enable him to book the earliest flight available. He was informed that the airplane had already been fully, but he managed to persuade the sympathetic airline to let him sit in the plane's rear with the flight attendant and he was allowed.

Selak’s first experience with air travel went smoothly airborne until shortly before landing when the unthinkable happened. One of the plane's doors somehow flew open. The door was ripped open and the flight attendant was sucked into midair followed shortly by Frank. The plane crashed and the flight attendant to the pilots and 17 other passengers died. Frank Selak miraculously survived after landing on a haystack that cushioned his fall. Though no one knows exactly what happened in the confusion, one can imagine free-falling next to a doomed aircraft only to have your life saved by some well-placed hay. It turns out this was only the beginning of Selak's next on the list of dangerous forms of transportation.

Again in 1966, the unfortunate man was in another fatal accident when the bus he was riding in plunged into a river. This time unfrozen, but no less deadly as there were four casualties but again he came out largely unscathed.

Some of Selak's friends were now afraid to travel with him because he seemed like a bad luck charm on every voyage he took, and as one of his neighbors said "If I heard frane had booked a flight or a train a have already booked, I would cancel mine”.

Frank continued to enjoy his life thereafter these earlier incidents. A couple of comparatively uneventful years passed until 1970 when on one fateful day his that his car’s fuel tank exploded on the motorway. He just barely escaped with his seemingly charmed life. Again, in 1973 when a malfunctioning fuel pump leaked petrol over his vehicle flames spewed at him. He lived through moments of horror, caught fire, and lost almost all his hair, but again he survived without major injuries At this point his friends and neighbors were starting to worry that Frane had been cursed.

Fast forward a couple of decades after, in 1995 he made news again as a bus drove his vehicle off the road and into a narrow ravine where he survived with the help of his airbag. The following year also brought the immortal man a famous disaster when a truck came barreling toward his Skoda as he drove around a mountain road. This episode ended with Frank Selak leaping free and hanging onto a tree branch only to watch in horror as the car exploded 100 meters below. In his own words, Frank explains “I swerved to avoid a United Nations truck on a narrow mountain road and crashed through the safety barrier and down an embankment. At the last minute, I forced the car door open and threw myself out landing in trees, and watched as the car plummeted down a cliff and exploded 300 feet below. I was bruised but not shocked”.

As one will be wondering what fate has for Frane considering the series of unfortunate events he was rather very fortunate in the mid-2000s as he won the lottery in Croatia. His jackpot was worth about 1.1 million dollars. With this, he bought two luxurious homes, a boat, and an expensive car.

For about a decade, Frank was living a blessed life until he had a major change of heart and decided to live more economically. The pensioner realized that money couldn’t buy happiness and decided to live a frugal life. He sold his luxury home on a private island, gave away his fortune to family and friends, and moved back to his modest home in the south of Zagreb.

In the center of the country, he kept the last bit of his winnings for a hip replacement operation so he could enjoy life with his fifth wife, and also so he could build a shrine of the Virgin Mary to give thanks for his luck.

Many applauded Frank for his big heart and clear mind in old age. Understandably he's just thankful to be alive and have his health after so many run-ins with the Grim Reaper.

Death finally accepted Frane on 30th November 1996 at the age of 87 years.

After his death, he continues to be famous for escaping death several times. He may very well be the world's luckiest man.