Canadian Man Peter McCathie Got Struck By Lightning As A Teen, Goes On To Win $1 Million Lottery Years Later

Meet the new luckiest man in the world! Peter McCathie, a man from Canada, has defied the odds not once – but twice! McCathie, who was as a teen hit by lightning – a one in a million chance, survived the accident. Years later, he defied the odds again – this time by winning a $1 million lottery! The probability of a man getting to experience both these incidents was calculated to be a staggering one in 2.6 trillion!

According to ABC News, Peter McCathie won the $ 1 million prize after he purchased a $3 lottery ticket from the Atlantic Lottery. If that wasn’t all, he is getting another $10,000 in prize money because he owns the Amherst Shore County Store in Amherst Shore, Nova Scotia where he bought the ticket for himself. The kind man that McCathie is, he is also splitting the prize money between his co-worker Diana Miller, both of whom were buying lottery tickets together for years. Describing his incredible luck, McCathie first told reporters the amazing story of the lightning strike that nearly killed him when he was 14-years-old. Peter was on a boating trip when the lighting bolt 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,” McCathie told CTV.

Years later, he won the $ 1 million lottery. With the money, he plans to take his wife of 30 years on a second honeymoon.

“I honestly expected to get hit by lightning again first,” he told CTV.

Meanwhile, a mathematician calculated the odds of these two instances together happening to a single person and came up with the 1 in 2.6 trillion figure. To make things even more incredible, Peter later told reporters that even his daughter was once hit by lightning. Being the daughter of a lucky father, she too survived the mishap! The mathematician took all these factors into consideration before coming to the 1 in 2.6 trillion figure. However, one thing that was not considered in the calculation was the total number of lottery tickets that McCathie had purchased until now. The figure was calculated by University of Moncton mathematics professor Sophie Leger who told ABC News that she didn’t know the exact number of lottery tickets McCathie has bought in his lifetime to come up with the odds.

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

Do you think Peter McCathie is among the luckiest persons on the planet?

[Image Via ABC News]