21/08/2023
Frano Selak (June 14, 1929, Dubrovnik β November 30, 2016) was a Croatian who is known for allegedly escaping death several times. He is described as the luckiest or unluckiest man in the world. Mostly people talk about his misfortunes from his later life, and events from his childhood are less well known because Selak himself rarely mentioned them. As a music teacher, he often changed the cities where he worked, so he also worked in ModriΔa in Bosnia and Herzegovina. On a trip to OdΕΎak in 1957, an accident happened: only he and the driver remained in the bus, they decided to drink brandy. At one turn, the bus continued straight even though the driver was turning the steering wheel to the right. They broke through the fence and fell into the Bosna river, which was shallow there, so they didn't drown. He did not have any major injuries. The following year, he traveled by train from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik with the mother of one of his friends. A huge rock fell on the tracks due to the storm and the train jumped out and fell into the cold Neretva river. He managed to pull himself and his wife out of the wagon, and they were pulled out of the water by the villagers of Grabovac, where the accident happened. 17 passengers died. When his mother fell seriously ill in Rijeka in 1962, he was working in Daruvar and decided to visit his mother by plane from Zagreb. He was sitting next to the emergency exit door in the tail of the plane. There he met the stewardess Rozika, with whom he stood up and spoke. The flight attendant flew out through the emergency exit, followed by Frano Selak. She fell into a tree where she was rescued by a military helicopter, and he into a haystack. He survived a fall from a height of 800 meters. He had no fractures or serious injuries. They are the only survivors. His car caught fire on the highway in 1972. He managed to get out with burnt hair. Just a year later, the car caught fire again and exploded, but Selak managed to get out before that. In 1995, he was driving on the road towards Karlobag when he was hit by a UNPROFOR tractor. In fact, the trailer got in the way and hit Selak's car, which fell into a 150-meter abyss. It fell into a ravine and exploded, but, since he was not strapped in, Selak fell out of the car and was left hanging between a tree and a rock. In June 2002, he won 1 million euro in the lottery. He spent some of the money on himself, and distributed a good part of it to acquaintances. He died at the age of 87.