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Luck & Serendipity

This story illustrates two things:

(1) Bad and good fortune tend to balance out - sometimes within a very short timespan.
(2) Sometimes a bad day can be repaired by simply hitting 'Reset' and starting over.
Man hits 2 deer with new car, then he hits $2M in lottery

An unlucky start to a North Carolina man’s day turned upside down when he discovered he won a $2 million lottery prize hours after hitting two deer with his new car.

Anthony Dowe, of Leland, had an accident on his way to work, the North Carolina Education Lottery said in a statement Tuesday. It ruined his day, so he went back home, got into bed and went to sleep.

“Then I woke up and checked my tickets. I checked the fourth ticket and I saw the ‘4’ and then the next number and the next number and the next number,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Wow!’ It was just crazy.” ...

His winning Mega Millions ticket matched all five white balls. The odds? 1 out of 12.6 million. ...

Dowe took his ticket to a store and won $1 million. That prize doubled when the 2x Megaplier ticket was drawn. ...

FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/man-hits-2-deer-wins-2m-lottery-fdb293407e168a44ddc4cd8aefe9a7e7
 
Luck is the narrative we put on events.

A man comes out of coma and wins the lottery: we don't say he was unlucky to be in a coma (which is something that most of us never suffer) but we say he was lucky to win the lottery.

I am always amused by those "and finally..." news stories that start with words like, "Travelling salesman Dave Smith is the luckiest man alive...".

Dave Smith's car had a brake failure, swerved out of control, went over a cliff and landed on a railway line. Dave was thrown through the open window as a train hits the car, and he landed in a thorn bush which broke his fall. He then spent 12 hours hanging in a thorn bush before he was rescued by a passer by.

Know what? I feel luckier than that, because my brakes didn't fail, my car hasn't been written off, and I'm not covered from head to toe in scratches from landing in a thorn bush.
 
Luck is the narrative we put on events.

A man comes out of coma and wins the lottery: we don't say he was unlucky to be in a coma (which is something that most of us never suffer) but we say he was lucky to win the lottery.

I am always amused by those "and finally..." news stories that start with words like, "Travelling salesman Dave Smith is the luckiest man alive...".

Dave Smith's car had a brake failure, swerved out of control, went over a cliff and landed on a railway line. Dave was thrown through the open window as a train hits the car, and he landed in a thorn bush which broke his fall. He then spent 12 hours hanging in a thorn bush before he was rescued by a passer by.

Know what? I feel luckier than that, because my brakes didn't fail, my car hasn't been written off, and I'm not covered from head to toe in scratches from landing in a thorn bush.
Divine providence too! :bish::sdevil:
A big earthquake happens and folks are buried in the rubble but by some "miracle" after much prayer survivors are brought to light. Waitaminute...
 
Years ago someone I knew crashed his new and very expensive car, wrote it off! and walked away.
I said 'Oooh! That was lucky!' and received a faceful.

It wasn't lucky at ALL. That was a BRAND NEW CAR! :mad:

:rolleyes:

Must admit, I laughed. A lot. :rollingw:
 
Years ago someone I knew crashed his new and very expensive car, wrote it off! and walked away.
I said 'Oooh! That was lucky!' and received a faceful.

It wasn't lucky at ALL. That was a BRAND NEW CAR! :mad:

:rolleyes:

Must admit, I laughed. A lot. :rollingw:
I thunk people tend to apply the word luck too often to things that are more properly described as fortunate, 'guy wins the lottery' fortunate he bought a lottery ticket for that particular draw, 'guy survives road accident', fortunate he wasnt killed etc...
 
Years ago someone I knew crashed his new and very expensive car, wrote it off! and walked away.
I said 'Oooh! That was lucky!' and received a faceful.

It wasn't lucky at ALL. That was a BRAND NEW CAR! :mad:

:rolleyes:

Must admit, I laughed. A lot. :rollingw:

I knew someone who fell asleep with a candle burning and woke up to find his room on fire. He got out but his stuff was ruined. When I commented how lucky he was he didn't wake up dead he declared "Lucky?! I'm not lucky, all my stuff got burnt!"

:dunno:
 
I knew someone who fell asleep with a candle burning and woke up to find his room on fire. He got out but his stuff was ruined. When I commented how lucky he was he didn't wake up dead he declared "Lucky?! I'm not lucky, all my stuff got burnt!"

:dunno:

Yup, when my kids were teenagers we had a house fire that burned out the kitchen and smoked up the whole house.*

It was in the daytime so everyone was soon out and safe, including the pets. Nobody was hurt and everything we lost was just stuff.

To me this seemed very lucky indeed. Nobody else agreed.

*Do NOT take chances with fire! At the time there was a Fire Brigade TV ad with the slogan 'Get out, get us out, stay out!' which is what I did.

When the smoke alarm went off I rushed into the kitchen just in time to see the fire whoosh along the ceiling and nearly burn my eyebrows off. Scary.
 
Woman scoops $300,000 lottery prize on way home from collecting a $100,000 win

The 70-year-old woman, who has decided to remain anonymous, was ecstatic when she went to claim her prize $100,000 (£88,000) prize in Newark, Delaware, US, on October 20.

The woman said: "My best friend was the first person I told about winning the $100,000 top prize, and she came with me to claim it.”

But then on her way home, after buying another lottery ticket to celebrate, she discovered that she had won a whopping $300,000 (£265,000).

The Delaware State Lottery said: "The pair soon returned to Lottery Headquarters to claim the woman's $300,000 top prize, making her total winnings for the day $400,000, and October 20, 2022, a day she won't soon forget."
 

Visitor finds huge 7.46-carat diamond in Crater of Diamonds State Park

Eventually, Navas emerged at the park’s Diamond Discovery Center with his findings. There, he was told he had found a 7.46-carat brown diamond.

On January 11, Navas arrived at the park, bought his ticket, and rented a basic diamond hunting kit, according to the news release.

“I got to the park around nine o’clock and started to dig,” Navas said in the release. “That is back-breaking work, so by the afternoon I was mainly looking on top of the ground for anything that stood out.”

Lucky for Navas, the park had received more than an inch of rain a few days before he arrived, so it was wet and muddy, the release said.

“As rain falls on the field, it washes away the dirt and uncovers heavy rocks, minerals and diamonds near the surface,” Assistant Park Superintendent Waymon Cox explained.

Many of the park’s biggest diamonds are found on the surface, Cox said, and the park periodically plows the 37.5 acre search area to loosen the soil and to promote natural erosion.

Navas named his diamond the Carine Diamond, after his fiancé, and plans to have the stone divided into two diamonds, one to gift to his bride-to-be and the other for his daughter.

It's is the eighth-largest diamond found in the Crater of Diamonds since it became a state park in 1972, according to the news release. On average, park visitors find one or two diamonds there every day.
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