THE LUCKIEST MAN IN THE WORLD
| Jun 18 2003 | |
| From Allan Hall In Berlin | |
| HE thought he was the world's most jinxed man but Frane Selak can finally smile. After cheating death an amazing SEVEN times in a string of train, plane and road crashes and surviving four marriages Frane, 74, has won £600,000 on the lottery. Now he plans to celebrate by marrying his 54-year-old girlfriend. Smiling in joy, the man who turned out to be the world's luckiest said yesterday: "At last the demons have gone and the devil has moved on to torment someone else. "I suppose my marriages were disasters, too. I feel like my life is just beginning." Croatian Frane first realised the gremlins were out to get him in 1962 when a Dubrovnik-bound train he was travelling on jumped the rails and plunged into an icy river. Seventeen people drowned. Shocked and bruised, Frane swam to safety. He was taken to hospital with hypothermia. Recalling his grim struggle in the freezing water, the former music teacher said: "I prayed to God then. A man who doesn't believe in God has no life." A year later he received a message that his mother was seriously ill. Desperate to save time, Frane managed to talk a stewardess into letting him sit with her at the back of a full plane flying from Zagreb to Rijeka. He said: "One minute, we were drinking tea. The next, the rear door was ripped open and the poor girl was sucked into mid-air - swiftly followed by me." The stewardess, 17 passengers and both pilots died when the plane hurtled to the ground. But Frane, from Pepinja, survived with cuts after being hurled into a haystack. Three years later, in 1966, a bus he was travelling on in Split careered into a river, killing four. Typically, Frane swam to safety. More cuts, more bruises, more shock...but still alive. He said: "By now, my friends had stopped coming round. Too much bad karma." After this catalogue of disasters it was no surprise to Frane when his Skoda caught fire as he drove along a motorway in 1970. He jumped out seconds before the fuel tank exploded. Three years later he lost his hair when a faulty fuel pump spewed petrol over the hot engine of his Wartburg car, blowing flames through the air vents. More than 20 years went by without incident and Frane dared to think he had beaten his jinx. Then eight years ago he was knocked down by a bus in Zagreb, sustaining minor injuries. The following year he was driving a second Skoda in the Croatian mountains when a UN truck headed straight for him. Frane steered to the right, smashed through a barrier and plunged down the mountainside. At the last minute he forced open a door and landed in trees as his car exploded 300ft beneath him. Then the gods who had tested the old survivor for so long finally smiled on him. This week, two days after his 74th birthday, Frane learned he had won £600,000. His lottery numbers were made up of 19, 48, and 34 from his mobile phone, 38 in memory of most of those who did not survive his crashes, 14 for the one marriage he is about to have and the four he has already had and 20 because his girlfriend is 20 years his junior. Frane is buying a house, new car and a speedboat. He said: "Now it's the good times from here on. There's no looking back. Life is sweet." |