Wednesday, October 01, 2008

[luck] some just don't have it, some do


Robert Evans, a transient, was hit by a car [which didn't stop] on a Tuesday evening. He went to hospital, was released early in the morning, tried to cross a railway bridge and was hit by a train.

In 1987, Larry Reynolds was doing contracting work on a building scaffold when he was struck by lightning. In 2004, now aged 57, he was cleaning his shower when lightning struck him again.

25 children at a school in Falkirk in February this year were injured in a pile-up in a school corridor triggered when a first-year pupil stopped to pick up her shoe. Paramedics were called to the school to treat pupils for crush injuries, including ankle sprains, bruising and sore heads.

In March this year, the media called six accidents at the same time around Melbourne "freak" but they were probably referring to the concurrence more than the accidents themselves, which were ordinary.

Some people feel that freak accidents are misnamed and might not be as unexpected as first thought. For example:

According to a study entitled "Demographics of U.S. Lightning Casualties and Damages from 1959 - 1994," by Ronald L. Holle and Raúl E. López of the National Severe Storms Laboratory and E. Brian Curran of the National Weather Service, males account for 84% of lightning fatalities and 82% of injuries.

One snippet supporting this:

Major Summerford, who fought at Flanders, was knocked off his horse by a flash of lightning and paralysed from the waist down. He moved to Canada, and when he was fishing, he was struck again by lightning and his right side was paralysed. In 1930, he was again struck and this time completely paralysed. He died 2 years later.

Did the nature of his business cause this or did he induce this?

Why, for example, when I cross fields sometimes and then walk under street lamps, they go out and then come back on after I've passed by? Why, when I was in Sicily, did the boiler break? Why, back in the UK, did the boiler break two days ago and we won't have hot water until tomorrow? Why did the driving licence arrive from the DVLA and yet the documents didn't?

These things are sent to puzzle us.

6 comments:

  1. My father was a mathematician. He always talked of "the law of cussedness of things in general". He had a habit of walking into lamp posts.

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  2. You're bad luck. I have felt the effects since you arrived in the U.K, and wasn't going to say anything , but............

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  3. To be honest if you're going to wave a fishing rod around in a thunder storm it's bound to happen.

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  4. Those lightening strike things... yes unlucky. But to some extent I really do believe that people can make their own luck, you just have to keep working at it!

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