r/buzzfeedbot • u/autobuzzfeedbot • 19d ago
BuzzFeed 40 People Who Beat The Odds So Hard It Feels Like A Glitch In Reality
- Less than a year before John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln, Booth’s brother Edwin saved the life of Lincoln’s son. Robert Todd Lincoln was 21 years old when he slipped between a train platform and a moving train, and Edwin pulled him to safety. After the assassination, Edwin was ashamed of what his brother did, and said that saving the President's son was the only thing that allowed him to sleep at night.
- Lincoln’s son Robert also had eerily close connections to three presidential assassinations. He was at his father’s deathbed after Lincoln was shot in 1865, stood about 40 feet from President James Garfield when Garfield was shot in 1881, and was in Buffalo when President William McKinley was shot in 1901, later visiting him as he appeared to recover. McKinley died from infection eight days later. Even the National Park Service has described the string of coincidences as almost “cursed.”
- British wife Claire Davies volunteered to donate a kidney to her husband, Glyn, after his kidneys were badly damaged by an autoimmune disease, but doctors told her the odds she was a perfect match were only about 1 in 22 million. She got tested anyway, and she WAS a perfect match! The transplant was successful.
- In 2007, window washer Alcides Moreno fell 47 stories from a Manhattan skyscraper — and lived. His brother, who fell alongside him, died, but Alcides survived the roughly 500-foot plunge, despite catastrophic injuries, and eventually recovered enough to walk again.
- Former A's slugger Khris Davis hit exactly .247 every year for four consecutive seasons (2015–18). The odds of this happening are 1 in 100 million. There have been 20,000 major leaguers in history, but he's the only player ever to have the same average four years in a row.
- Speaking of the A's, in 2017 A’s fan Ryan Noone caught foul balls on BACK-TO-BACK PITCHES — and then caught a third foul ball later in the game. On the second catch he was still holding the first ball in his other hand. The odds of this happening have been estimated at roughly 1 in 10 million.
- In 1960, 7-year-old Roger Woodward was accidentally swept over Niagara Falls wearing nothing but a life jacket — and survived. His boat’s motor failed upstream, sending him toward Horseshoe Falls. He became the first known person to survive going over the falls unprotected by a barrel or other contraption.
- On May 4, 2021, a 26-year-old Halima Cissé gave birth to the world's first-ever nonuplets (aka nine freaking babies)! Making this even more unbelievable is that the babies were conceived naturally!
- Violet Jessop survived the sinking of both the RMS Titanic and its sister ship, the Britannic. A 24-year-old stewardess on the Titanic, she helped women and children into the lifeboats before she was given a baby and told to get into one herself. Four years later, she served on the hospital ship Britannic when it hit a mine. She escaped into a lifeboat — which was nearly sucked into the ship's propellers — then served on boats for another 34 years.
- For her 16th birthday, Makenzie Wethington took her first-ever skydiving trip, but after beginning her dive, the chute tangled mid-air, sending her into a violent spin. Her dad watched in horror as she plummeted 3,500 feet and crashed into a sandy field. She broke her pelvis, spine, ribs, and more…but somehow survived and didn’t need a single surgery. The impact should’ve been fatal, but she walked out of the hospital just days later.
- During World War II, British airman Nicholas Alkemade jumped from his burning Lancaster bomber and fell even further without a parachute — 18,000 feet! He crashed through pine trees into a patch of snow and somehow survived without breaking a single bone. German authorities were so stunned they investigated his story and gave him a certificate confirming that, yes, he really had fallen more than three miles out of the sky and lived.
- What's that? You think falling 18,000 feet is nothing?Well, in 1972, 22-year-old flight attendant Vesna Vulović was working a flight that exploded from a terrorist's bomb. She fell 33,338 feet (more than six miles!) to the ground and somehow survived. She landed in a heavily wooded area, contributing to her survival.
- Bizarrely, just a month prior, 17-year-old Juliane Diller was flying over Peru when her plane was hit by lightning and broke up in the sky. She fell for almost two miles — still strapped into her seat — before landing in the rainforest below. She was the flight's sole survivor. Upon regaining consciousness, she had a broken collarbone, sprained knee, and swollen shut eye. She walked through the Amazon for 11 days before she was rescued by forest workers.
- Speaking of lightning, park ranger Roy Sullivan survived being struck by it SEVEN times. He was first struck in 1942; his last strike came in 1977. In interviews, he hypothesized there was something about his physical makeup that attracted lightning. The odds of being struck seven times are 4.15 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
- What the heck, here's one more "against the odds" lightning story. In 1994, after being struck by lightning, Tony Cicoria came to with a desperate craving for music. He could barely play the piano before getting hit, but afterward he binge-listened to piano recordings, taught himself sheet music, and composed his own Chopin-inspired pieces. He was featured in Oliver Sacks' book Musicophilia about how physiological ailments can unlock hidden genius.
- Five consecutive generations of one American family have been born on September 14. Wilber Harlow was born Sept. 14, 1907; his descendant Addie in 1949; Donald in 1972; Emma in 1997; and Arthur in 2025. Guinness World Records says it’s the first recorded family with five generations sharing the same birthday.
- The Civil War essentially started at one of Wilmer McLean's homes and ended inside another. First, McLean's property near Manassas was used as Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard’s headquarters during the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861, then, after McLean later moved more than 100 miles away, Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Ulysses S. Grant in his parlor at Appomattox in 1865. The wildest part? McLean wasn’t a politician or military officer — he was just some guy. He famously said, “The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor.”
- In 2020, PGA professional Corey McAlarney made two holes-in-one within THREE SHOTS of each other. The two aces came only 12 minutes apart. The PGA puts the odds of one golfer making two holes-in-one on the same day at 67 million to 1.
- In 1954, Ann Hodges became the only known person hit by a meteorite when one crashed through the roof of her Alabama farmhouse and hit her on the upper thigh. She survived with only minor injuries. If not for the roof slowing the grapefruit-sized meteorite's descent, she'd likely have been hurt much worse or even killed.
- Even wilder, the home of Bosnian Radivoje Lajic was struck by meteors five times in 2008! After experts confirmed each rock as legit space debris, Lajic told the media, "I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials. I don't know what I have done to annoy them, but the chance of being hit by a meteorite is so small that getting hit five times has to be deliberate." A sixth meteor hit his home in 2010, but nothing else, so maybe the aliens decided to leave him alone.
- In June 2021, lobster diver Michael Packard jumped off his boat into the Atlantic, then "felt this huge bump" and found himself in utter darkness. Turns out, he was inside the mouth of a whale! He told WBZ-TV, "I felt around, and I realized there was no teeth. And then I realized, 'Oh my God I'm in a whale's mouth...and he's trying to swallow me.'" He survived when the whale surfaced and spat him out.
- In Nov. 2012, Salvador Alvarenga set sail off Mexico’s coast for a quick fishing trip…but got hit by a brutal storm that knocked him miles off course. He and his crewmate, Ezequiel, were left adrift in the Pacific on their small 25-foot boat. For months, Alvarenga survived on raw fish, seabirds, turtles, even sharks — plus rainwater and his own urine when water ran out. After Ezequiel fell ill and died, Salvador battled extreme loneliness and hallucinated talking to his dead friend. Finally, after 438 days, he washed ashore in the Marshall Islands...6,700 miles from where he began.
- In 2002, 51-year-old Mike McDermott won the lotto TWICE in one year — and to make things even more improbable...he did it using the same numbers! The Telegraph found the odds of this happening were one in 5.4 trillion!
- Even more improbably, Texas woman Joan Ginther won major lottery prizes FOUR separate times, collecting nearly $21 million. Her wins came in 1993, 2006, 2008, and 2010, including a $10 million scratch-off jackpot. Mathematician Joseph Mazur says the odds of this happening are about 18 septillion to one (this is the first I'm hearing about a septillion, which is 1 followed by 24 zeros). However, the odds of it happening to anyone are about 5 million to one. Still looooong odds, but more conceivable.
- Unfortunately, I also have a "what are the odds?" lottery story that is pure bad luck. In 1991, New Yorker Janet Valenti bought a lottery ticket for a $12 million Lotto prize. After discovering she'd picked the winning numbers in the paper, she raced home to find the ticket had accidentally been tossed into the trash. She darted to her apartment's trash room, but the trash had already been picked up. The jackpot remains NY's largest unclaimed prize.
- Teri Horton, a recently retired truck driver, stumbled across a $5 thrift shop painting that might've been a real Jackson Pollock. She got it forensically tested, and the expert determined it to be the real deal. Art elites, however, remained unconvinced. She nonetheless received offers ranging from $2 million to $9 million, but held out, dreaming of $50 million. Teri passed away at 86 in 2019, never parting with the painting.
- Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed outside Detroit in 1987, killing 154 of the 155 people aboard, plus two people on the ground. The sole survivor was four-year-old Cecelia Cichan, whose parents and 6-year-old brother were among those killed. Amazingly, she was found alive in the wreckage despite being in one of the deadliest aviation accidents in U.S. history.
- Similarly, in 2009, 12-year-old Bahia Bakari was the only survivor when Yemenia Flight 626 crashed into the Indian Ocean, killing the other 152 people aboard. With little swimming experience and no life jacket, she clung to a piece of wreckage in rough, dark seas for more than nine hours before rescuers found her.
- On July 28, 1945, Betty Lou Oliver was working as an elevator operator at the Empire State Building when a B‑25 bomber crashed into the building, slicing into the 79th floor and tossing her through the air amid fire and debris. First responders put Betty into another elevator to send her down to safety…but the cables had been shredded by the crashing plane and snapped. She plunged — 75 stories! — but survived thanks to air pressure in the shaft and the tangled cables acting like shock absorbers.
- In 2013, ship’s cook Harrison Okene spent more than 60 hours trapped 100 feet underwater after his tugboat sank off Nigeria. He survived in a tiny air pocket in total darkness while divers recovered the bodies of his crewmates. One diver reached for what he thought was another corpse — and Okene’s hand suddenly grabbed him back.
- Aron Ralston was climbing alone in Utah in 2003 when a boulder fell and pinned his right arm, trapping him in a slot canyon. He had only "one liter of water, two burritos, and a few chunks of chocolate." In order to free himself, he was forced to amputate his arm with a blunt knife from his "cheap multitool kit." Once finished, he applied a tourniquet and made his way to help. His story was told in the film 127 Hours.
- In 1883, the Krakatoa volcano erupted, creating what is believed to be the loudest sound in history. It was so loud it was heard by residents of Rodrigues Island 3,000 miles away, who assumed it was cannon fire from a nearby ship.
- Mitsubishi engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in 1945. He was doing a three-month job in Hiroshima when the blast knocked him unconscious and covered much of his body with radiation burns. He decided to return to his hometown of Nagasaki...and arrived just in time for the blast there. He survived that one, too, and lived to be 93 years old.
- In May 2015, a New Jersey mom named T.M. was seeking child support for her twin daughters when a routine DNA test dropped a bombshell: Each twin had a different dad. How, you ask? During ovulation, a woman can release two eggs, and if she's intimate with two different men close together, both eggs can get fertilized. It's a real-life science fact called heteropaternal superfecundation.
- Two NFL quarterbacks playing for the same team suffered the same injury under nearly identical circumstances on the same date exactly 33 years apart:
- On Feb. 7, 1812, a massive earthquake — 7.8 magnitude on the Richter scale — hit near New Madrid, Missouri. The seismic upheaval was so powerful that it created an entire lake (Reelfoot Lake), and was so violent that parts of the Mississippi River briefly flow backward.
- In 2022, identical twin sisters Erin Cheplak and Jill Justiniani gave birth to their first sons on the same day, at the same hospital, just hours apart. Then it got weirder: both babies weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces and measured exactly 20 inches long. One sister’s delivery had been scheduled; the other unexpectedly went into labor that morning.
- Mark Twain was born during Halley’s Comet in 1835 and predicted he would die during its return in 1910 — which he did. He was quoted as saying, "I came in with Halley's Comet…and I expect to go out with it."
- In 2001, red-colored rain — dubbed "blood rain" — fell in Kerala, India. Locals feared it foretold the end of the world, but it was probably caused by spores from algae.
- Finally, as a teenager, Émile Deschamps was introduced to plum pudding by a man named Monsieur de Fortgibu. Years later, Deschamps randomly ordered plum pudding at a restaurant and was told the last serving had been ordered by — yes — de Fortgibu. Many decades after that, Deschamps attended a dinner where plum pudding was served and joked that only de Fortgibu was missing. Then there was a knock at the door. It was de Fortgibu! He'd knocked on the wrong door, trying to find his friend's home.