00:00Despite being exposed to a lethal dose of radiation for the second time in three days,
00:05he lived an otherwise healthy life.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the luckiest people in history
00:12who survived near-death experiences or underwent many hardships and won against the odds.
00:16I just won 250,000. I'm not joking. I just won 250,000.
00:24Number 10. Nichiren A passionate supporter of Lotus Sutra and Buddhism,
00:31Nichiren's views made him beloved but also made him plenty of enemies. So much so that he was
00:35banished in 1261. Then when Nichiren returned to Japan, he was attacked in 1264. While he survived,
00:41he had a broken arm and a head wound. But that's not where his unprecedented luck comes in. In 1271,
00:47Nichiren was arrested by soldiers and was set to be executed. There are two beliefs about what
00:51happened that fateful night. One account claimed a bright light shone in the sky which terrified
00:56the executioner. Another version claimed lightning struck the executioner's blade,
01:00ending their life. Either way, Nichiren's sentence was changed to a second exile.
01:05Number 9. Martin De Jonga 2014 was a dreadful year for air travel. In March,
01:11Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished. While debris has been found, we still don't know for sure what
01:16happened. In July, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by either Russian or Ukrainian forces.
01:22Between those, 537 people are assumed to have perished altogether.
01:27Thoughts and prayers continue to be with their families around the world who are going through
01:31just unimaginable grief. One person who claims they were nearly one of the lives lost was Dutch
01:37cyclist De Jonga, who at the time was a part of Malaysia's Terengganu cycling team. He stated he'd
01:42plan to book a seat on both flights but went with cheaper options instead. These decisions not only
01:47saved him money but also his life. Attention should be paid to the victims and survivors,
01:52wishing everyone affected by this disaster a lot of strength.
01:56Number 8. Edwin Robinson
01:58In 1971, Robinson was involved in a truck crash that left him blind and partially deaf.
02:03Not exactly lucky, but nine years later in 1980, a dose of good fortune caught up to Robinson.
02:08At home in Falmouth, Maine, a thunderstorm was raging. Concerned about one of his chickens out
02:14in the elements, Robinson went outside to get it. While escaping the downpour from under a tree,
02:18he was struck by lightning and survived.
02:24In the U.S., there's a 1 in 15,300 chance of a person being hit by lightning throughout their
02:31lifetime. After a brief nap, Robinson's vision returned and he no longer needed a hearing aid.
02:35Even years later, he was still enjoying the surprising benefits.
02:39In most circumstances, lightning will leave people permanently scarred,
02:42so it's best to avoid it altogether and heed any warnings.
02:46Number 7. Adolph Sachs
02:47Best known for inventing the saxophone and other instruments, the 19th century's
02:56sax survived numerous close calls in his life. In fact, even his mother stated he's a child
03:01condemned to misfortune, he won't live. Beginning when he was a child, Sachs fell
03:05from three stories and hit his head. He also drank a bowl of acidic water that he mistook
03:09from milk. Add in further incidents of him sleeping in a room where varnished furniture
03:14was drying, being burned from a gunpowder explosion, getting burnt after falling onto a
03:19hot cast iron pan, being hit in the head and falling into a river, and we have the most
03:23hard-working guardian angel in existence. On February 7th, 1894, Adolph died peacefully in
03:29Paris. The saxophone had already crossed the Atlantic, primed to evolve into an icon of
03:33American jazz music and guaranteeing sax his immortality. Number 6. Vesna Vulovic
03:39Vesna Vulovic's story for me is one of the most incredible survival stories, if in fact not the
03:45most impressive that we have here at Guinness World Records. In 1972, JAT flight 367 was coming
03:53from Stockholm, Sweden to Belgrade, modern-day Serbia. However, an explosive on-board went
03:57off midway through the journey. The plane crashed near a village in the modern-day Czech Republic.
04:02As people examined the wreckage, they found one survivor, cabin member Vulovic. Vesna was found
04:07screaming inside the wreckage, and the person who found her was a former World War II medic,
04:11so he was able to administer vital first aid before rescuers arrived. It's believed that her
04:17low blood pressure protected her heart and being pinned in the craft as passengers and crew were
04:22blown outside saved her life. Vulovic suffered many injuries, including temporary paralysis,
04:27which affected her for the rest of her life. She broke almost every bone in her body,
04:31and she was paralyzed temporarily, in a coma for three days. Due to this incredible feat,
04:37Vulovic was inducted into the Guinness World Records as the highest fall survived without a
04:42parachute, at 33,333 feet. 5. Teddy Roosevelt
04:48In 1912, former U.S. President Roosevelt was on the campaign trail for the election the following
04:58month. Instead of being a possible third term in the Oval Office, it was nearly the end of his life
05:03when he arrived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. On his way to deliver a speech at the Milwaukee Auditorium,
05:08Roosevelt was shot by John Schronk. Amazingly, rather than collapse, Roosevelt briefly stumbled
05:18and carried on. The bullet had struck a glasses case and then hit the 50-page speech in his jacket
05:23pocket before nestling in his chest. Roosevelt then delivered his 90-minute speech before going to the
05:28hospital. The bullet was left inside him for the rest of his life. Schronk, on the other hand,
05:31was sent to a psychiatric hospital. 4. Bill Morgan
05:41In 1998, Morgan was in a car crash in Australia. The damage and the allergic reaction to medication
05:47caused him to suffer multiple heart attacks. For nearly 15 minutes, Morgan was dead. However,
05:52he was thankfully revived. But he wasn't out of the woods as he fell into a 12-day coma before
05:57recovering. I'm only 37, and at 37, I've got so much to look forward to. Later, Lady Luck was
06:03looking upon him when Morgan got a new job, a fiancé, and won a car from a scratch card. With this turn
06:08of events in 1999, Nine News did a segment on him and got Morgan to recreate his win by buying another
06:14scratch card from a store. Amazingly, he won $250,000 Australian dollars, around $165,000 US dollars at the
06:21time. I just won $250,000. I'm not joking. I just won $250,000.
06:293. Violet Jessup
06:30The only woman to have survived the sinking of the two great seagoing sisters, Britannic and
06:36Titanic. It's bad enough to go through one boat accident, but three is unbelievable. Yet that's
06:41what happened with Jessup. In 1911, she was a steward aboard RMS Olympic when it struck the warship
06:47HMS Hawk. Thankfully, everyone survived and the boat got back to port. A year later, Jessup was
06:52working on the RMS Titanic when it sank after hitting an iceberg. While around 1,500 people
06:57didn't survive, Jessup did. Around 4 a.m., two hours after Titanic went down, the cruise ship
07:03Carpathia arrived and began pulling the survivors out of the lifeboats. Then, in 1916, during World War
07:09I, she was working on the sister ship of the Titanic, the HMHS Britannic. However, the vessel struck a
07:15German naval mine and sank. 30 people lost their lives, and Jessup nearly was one when she narrowly
07:20missed the wrecked boat's spinning propeller. She lived alone in this small country cottage until
07:25her death in 1971 at the age of 84. 2. Tsutomu Yamaguchi
07:30He doesn't know it yet, but the world's first atomic bomb has just exploded over the city
07:35with the force of 15,000 tons of TMT. On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
07:42At the time, Yamaguchi was there for a business trip. He survived but suffered severe radiation
07:47burns and ruptured eardrums. Up to 166,000 people died that day. Yamaguchi then traveled to Nagasaki
08:05to tell his work what had happened. While there, on August 9, the second atomic bomb was dropped in the
08:09city. This time, Yamaguchi wasn't injured in the devastation, though up to 80,000 people perished.
08:15After that experience, he became a supporter of nuclear disarmament. In 2009, the Japanese
08:20government recognized Yamaguchi as the only person to have survived both bombs.
08:24Despite being exposed to a lethal dose of radiation for the second time in three days,
08:29he lived an otherwise healthy life before finally dying at the age of 93.
08:35Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about
08:40our latest videos. You have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them.
08:45If you're on your phone, make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications.
08:49Number 1. Frane Selak
08:53Rather than a single guardian angel, Selak apparently had a whole army of them throughout
08:57his life. In 1962, Selak survived a train crash that took 17 lives. His train car plunged down a
09:04narrow canyon and into an icy river. Desperately fighting to escape the sinking train car,
09:09Selak made his way to the shore before being pulled to safety by a bystander. Then he was blown
09:13from a plane and landed on a haystack as the aircraft crashed, taking 19 lives. Seemingly
09:18transportation had a vendetta against Selak as he survived another two bus incidents and three
09:23car crashes. But his luck hadn't run out yet. In 2003, Selak won $1.1 million in the Croatian
09:29lottery. After enjoying a life of luxury, in 2010, he gave away the cash to friends and family.
09:34While some of the near-death experiences are disputed, if even half of them were confirmed
09:39to have happened, Selak was the luckiest person ever.
09:42Selak said that you could look at it two ways. I was either the unluckiest man in the world
09:46or the luckiest. I prefer to believe the latter.
09:49What's the luckiest thing to have happened to you? Let us know your tales below.
09:53More than 75,000 people died in the Nagasaki bombing. Yet once again, Tsutomu Yamaguchi walked away.
10:09Happy Birthday viral, see!
10:14Hello guys!
10:19Thank you guys.
10:22Well, thanks y'all.
