Man Survives Lightning Strike Then Wins Lottery, Beating 1 In 2.6 Trillion Odds

A man survived a lightning strike and later won the lottery. Sounds impossible, right?

The odds of both of these events happening to the same person are approximately one in 2.6 trillion. However, this is exactly what happened to one Canadian man, Peter McCathie.

McCathie first defied the odds against him when he was just 14-years-old. He had been wading through shallow water when lightning struck him.

“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,” he told CTV Atlantic.

Not only was McCathie the victim of a lightning strike, several years ago, his daughter was also struck by lightning in a very similar situation.

“They had pulled off the lake due to storms, so she was locking all the canoes, making sure they weren’t going to get blown away, and she got hit by lightning,” said McCathie.

Congrats to Peter McCathie & Diana Miller! The 2 co-workers from Cumberland Co. #NS won $1M on #lotto649! pic.twitter.com/zjLJKjMVCV

— Atlantic Lottery (@AL_Lottery) July 20, 2015

However, now many years later, it seems as though McCathie’s luck has changed, as he and his co-worker, Diana Miller, won a whopping $1 million on an Atlantic Lottery ticket. The duo had been purchasing tickets together for a little over a year, but never really expected to win. However, the pair hit big and claimed their million dollar prize at the Atlantic Lottery offices in Moncton on Monday, July 20.

“I honestly expected to get hit by lightning again first,” said McCathie.

A mathematics professor at the University of Moncton, Sophie Leger, explained just how rare McCathie’s situation is.

“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 Leger.

“It’s almost not possible, but it did happen,” she said, according to ABC News. “It shows that anything can happen in life.”

Diana said she is planning a trip to Cancun, Mexico, with her share of the winnings, while Peter is planning on taking a second honeymoon with his wife, who he has been married to for 30 years. McCathie also gets an additional $10,000 from the Atlantic Lottery Corporation because he owns the store in Amherst Shore, Nova Scotia, where they purchased the $3 ticket.

[Photo via Twitter]