Have you ever bought a lottery ticket during one of those billion dollar mega mega mega billions drawings and people will say “you’ve got a better chance of getting hit by lightning.”
What if you were a guy who’s had both happen?
The odds of getting struck by lightning in Canada are less than one in a million. The odds of winning the Atlantic Lotto 6/49 are even worse — one in 13,983,816. And the odds that both of these extraordinary events should happen to the same person in Nova Scotia are nearly impossible.
Oh but they did! Because there’s always a chance. Which is why people play lotto and also why they run inside during thunderstorms.
McCathie’s brush with death occurred during a boat trip when he was 14. The lottery winner said he was wading through shallow waters near the shore of a lake when he was struck by lightning.
“I was trying to lock the boat up, it was a very sunny day, there was one big, white cloud in the sky and the lightning bolt came through the trees and hit me,” McCathie told CTV Atlantic.
Those stories always usually end the saddest. It’s one thing to get hit during a storm but to get nailed right in the middle of a nice day. Freak occurence. To make this all even crazier, McCathie’s daughter was ALSO strike by lightning. Someone upstairs doesn’t like that family, and yet, someone else upstairs does because “lottery.”
Here’s the most insane fact about McCathie’s two strikes of luck:
So how unusual is his story?
A mathematics professor at the University of Moncton believes the odds may be in the trillions.
“By assuming that these events happened independently … so probability of lotto … times another probability of lightning – since there are two people that got hit by lightning – we get approximately 1 in 2.6 trillion,” said Sophie Leger.
So how’s McCathie handling his sudden small fortune? “I honestly expected to get hit by lightning again first,” said McCathie.
[via CTV News]