Sometimes being Lucky is very similar to being unlucky. Like, say 200 people throw rocks at you and they all miss. That’s pretty lucky, right? Real odds-defying stuff. But on the other hand, someone who at no point had 200 fucking people throwing fucking rocks at them is probably luckier. There’s a lot to be said for a quiet life.

Luck means different things to different people. Some believe you make your own luck, and any seemingly fortunate occurrence comes along as a result of hard work and putting oneself in the right place at the right time. Others see large parts of life as a bit of a roll of the dice, where things might pan out but might not, and there’s nothing anyone can do about any of it.

The truth is probably nearer to the first — you don’t win contests you don’t enter, after all, and a surprising amount of incredible discoveries have been made by people looking for things — but sometimes shit just makes no sense at all, and someone seems to just fart themselves into a fortune, and it takes the best will in the world not to feel really ripped off.  

15 The Four-Time Lottery Winner

Most people would stop buying lottery tickets after winning the lottery, but not Texan Joan R. Ginther. Between 1993 and 2010, she won over $2 million on the lottery four times, totalling over $20 million in winnings. Jesus. (Source)

14 The Double Nuke-Evader

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was visiting Hiroshima and injured when the nuclear bomb was dropped on it. He went home to Nagasaki, which was also bombed, and survived that too. Incredibly lucky? Or incredibly unlucky? Either way, he lived to 93. (Source)

13 The Man Who Came Back from the Dead to Win a Scratch-Off

Australian Bill Morgan awoke from a 12-day coma following a truck accident, Bought a scratch-off and won an $18,000 car. When a news channel got him to recreate the moment, he fucking won another $160,000. (Source)

12 The Un-Beheadable Monk

Twelfth-century Japanese monk Nichiren was sentenced to beheading, but as the executioner raised his sword, he got struck by lightning and died (or, some theorize, a meteor crashed into the ground near him). Either way, Nichiren was set free. (Source)

11 The Luckiest Lightning-Rod Ever

In 1980, Edwin E. Robinson was 62, blind and deaf. Stumbling around in a storm searching for a missing chicken, he got struck by lightning. After a nap, he found he could see and hear again. (Source)

10 The Thrift-Store National Treasure

In 2006, Michael Sparks bought a $2.48 copy of the Declaration of Independence from a Nashville thrift store. It turned out to be one of 200 commissioned by John Quincy Adams in 1820, worth a half-million dollars. (Source)

9 The Kitsch Handbag Worth a Fortune

In 2012, a 73-year-old retired chef bought a handbag with pictures of Elvis on it from a second-hand store in London. He noticed a label, researched the name and discovered it was a limited-edition Philip Treacy creation worth $450,000. (Source)

8 The Unkillable President

In 1835, unemployed painter Richard Lawrence pointed a gun at President Andrew Jackson and fired. The gun misfired, and Jackson walloped Lawrence with his cane. Lawrence produced another gun and fired it. It also misfired. The $20 man lived! (Source)

7 The Dogwalkers Who Stumbled Into Millions

The Saddle Ridge Hoard is a collection of gold coins worth $10 million, found by a Californian dogwalking couple exploring old buildings on their land. There’s something about owning huge swathes of land that just makes people lucky. (Source)

6 The Crash-Surviving Lottery-Winner

Sixty-Two-year-old Mohammad Basheer Abdul Khada walked away from a crashed Emirates airliner moments before it burst into flames. He then won a million dollars on a lottery ticket he’d bought in the airport. Hell of a vacation. (Source)

5 The Attic-Tidier Who Found a Cache of Cobb

A family clearing out the house of their late great-grandfather found seven baseball cards in a crumpled paper bag. They were over 100 years old, featuring the legendary Ty Cobb, and worth well over $1 million. Your loss, grandpa. (Source)

4 The Lucky Laundromat Lothario

In 1964, 21-year-old Carl Dean approached a young woman outside a Nashville laundromat. An aspiring musician, she’d arrived that day. Six decades later, Dolly Parton is universally beloved, worth $650 million, and her husband Carl has a fantastic anonymous life. (Source)

3 The Construction Worker and the Costly Comic

Minnesota construction worker David Gonzalez bought a $10,000 dilapidated house, planning to restore it. Remodeling a wall and removing the newspapers stuffed in it for insulation, he found a comic book — Action Comics #1, worth over $100,000. (Source)

2 The Helpful Hammer-Hunter

In 1992, British metal detectorist Eric Lawes was enlisted by his friend Peter Whatling to help find a lost hammer in a field. Looking for it, they instead found a treasure trove of Roman coins worth over $2 million. (Source)

1 The Drunken Survivor

Ludger Sylbaris probably didn’t feel lucky when he was jailed for drunken behavior on the island of Martinique in 1902. However, when Mount Pelee erupted nearby, killing 30,000 people, the tiny basement cell saved his life. (Source)

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