Frane Selak, of Croatia, has a reputation as the world’s luckiest man (or unluckiest, depending on your outlook). He’s said to have survived a train crash, a plane crash, and a car crash—and that’s just the start of his impossible brushes with death!
If you’ve grown up on a diet of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, you’ll know that ridiculous and impossible scenes are just par for the course. That’s the way things work on the big screen. For Selak, though, the truth is far stranger and more dramatic than anything Hollywood could cook up. But what really is the truth?
This humble man was born in Croatia in 1929. He led a relatively unremarkable life as a music teacher, which is hardly the most high-octane, daredevil occupation out there. That is until a fateful train journey in 1962 set off an unbelievable, impossible chain of events.
Selak’s Impossible Story begins
While riding the rails from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik, a freak accident saw his train catapulted into a river. Seventeen passengers were killed, Selak reports, but he was able to swim to shore with nothing but a broken arm and hypothermia for his troubles. This harrowing event was just a drop in the ocean compared to what was in store for him next.
The very next year, Frane was flying from Zagreb to Rijeka. He reports that an accident saw a door come detached from the aircraft, which presently crashed. This time, nineteen people lost their lives, while the superhuman Selak was reportedly found in a haystack. He awoke in a hospital, appropriately rattled but really none the worse for wear.
