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Surprises

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some people are astonishingly lucky, but it depends on your point of view whether that luck is good or bad. Surviving after falling out of a plane without a parachute has happened to a surprising number of people, but not all of them have fully recovered. Some folks win extraordinary jackpots from the lottery, and then file for bankruptcy shortly afterwards. Maybe it’s easier to survive an asteroid field if you don’t know the odds.

• Ann Hodges is the only person in history confirmed to have been hit by a meteorite. In 1954, a softball-sized rock crashed through the ceiling, bounced off a radio and hit Hodges. She survived the impact, sued to keep the meteorite, but didn’t quite thrive after her fifteen minutes of fame. [url]
• Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived the first nuclear bomb that hit Hiroshima, and then he made his way back to his hometown of Nagasaki — and survived another nuclear detonation. About 150 people were unlucky enough to watch both nuclear bombs, and only a handful experienced both events within the 1.5 mile blast zone of intense radiation. [url]
• Roy Sullivan, aka ‘Lightning Man’ or the ‘Spark Ranger’, was a ranger at Shenandoah National Park famous for being struck by lightning SEVEN TIMES (not in a row). He’s listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, but no one is encouraging anyone else to try to get struck by lightning, so Sullivan will probably be the only record holder for this category. The odds of being struck 7 times is estimated to be 4.15 in 10^32 — but if you’ve been struck just once, there’s actually a support group for survivors. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: ann hodges, guinness book of world records, life and death, lightning strike, meteorite, nuclear bombs, radiation, roy sullivan, survivors, tsutomu yamaguchi