When Lightning Strikes Twice

in #life7 years ago (edited)

On October 15, baseball fan Keith Hupp caught the winning home run at a playoff game in Los Angeles. A few days later, he was in Chicago for another playoff game where he caught a second home run ball. Dodger Stadium sits 56,000 fans, while Wrigley Field has a capacity of over 41,000. How was one person lucky enough to get two ‘once in a lifetime’ souvenirs in the same week?

lightning-strikes-twice

In 2005, another fan caught two home run balls during the same playoff game (though it was a long 18-inning affair). At the time, ESPN asked Stanford University statistics professor Brad Efron about the odds of catching a home run ball at a baseball game. Given that a few thousand people are sitting in the sections of the stadium where home run balls are hit, Professor Efron pegged the odds of catching one at somewhere between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 5,000.

ESPN also counted the seats in both left and right field, determining that about 10% of the fans at the stadium were sitting in those sections.

wrigley-field
Wrigley Field, showing the outfield seats in the background. Creative Commons via Wikipedia by Jason Hernandez.

Of course, it’s much more improbable for the same person to catch two home runs.

Struck by Lightning

Your chances of being struck by lightning in any given year are 1 in 960,000. (Those odds might improve if you spent some time around the mouth of the Catatumbo River in Venezuela, where there is lightning about 300 days per year.) Your odds of being struck twice in your lifetime are 1 in 9 million. Sources disagree on these kinds of odds, but they are approximately in the correct ballpark.

That’s still better than your chances of winning a jackpot in the Powerball lottery, which are 1 in 292 million. Wait, did I say being struck TWICE by lightning? But lightning doesn’t strike twice, does it?

daniel-boone-quote
He never said never.

Just ask the poor people in these videos if lightning can strike twice in the same place (and judge for yourself if the videos are real or fake!).


In 2003, NASA-funded scientists studied lightning strikes across the United States and concluded that 35 percent of lightning strikes actually hit the ground in more than one place. On average, a lightning strike hits the ground in 1.45 places, which means that the chances of being hit are greater than if they are calculated from the number of flashes.

There are numerous news reports of repeated lightning strikes also. In 2013, a few hours after Pope Benedict XVI resigned, an AFP photographer and several others witnessed two separate lightning strikes to the top of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. Here is a picture of one:

lightning-strikes-vatican

In 2013, ABC News reported that a Texas man was struck twice in quick succession by lightning. In May 2017, the BBC reported that lightning had struck a Stratford tower block twice. These strikes were caught on video and you can see them here: http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-england-london-40083120/lightning-strikes-stratford-tower-block-twice

In 2014, a visitor to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado was struck and killed by lightning. A day later in the same area of the park, four others were injured by another lightning strike.

In 2015, according to TIME Magazine, an Illinois man was struck by lightning outside his home; he also had been hit almost two decades earlier while working at a cemetery. Fortunately, he didn’t end up in a grave. Also, his name was Rod (and I’m not making that up). For getting hit twice, hopefully he earned the name “Lightning Rod”.

Start the ‘Jaws’ Music

In 2013, Greg Pickering was attacked by a shark in Australia. That came nine years after his first shark attack, making him one of the only people in the world to have suffered two shark attacks.

jaws
Jaws. Universal Pictures.

Pickering also was sailing on a boat that capsized in 2009 and spent three hours in the water before help arrived. Perhaps the fact that he has been diving for abalone for 40 years increased his chances of maritime mishaps, but that’s still a lot of trouble for one person to encounter.

tall-tales

And let’s not forget Erik Norrie. In 2013, the Guardian suggested he may be the world’s “unluckiest man”. Norrie lost a chunk of his leg to a shark while vacationing in the Bahamas, but that’s only part of his story. He also survived a lightning strike. And was bitten once by a rattlesnake. When asked if there were any other events, he mentioned that he had been attacked twice and punched by monkeys as well.

Climbing through piles of rocks in the desert or walking through the jungle with an armload of bananas might increase the odds of those last two, but if this guy really was struck by lightning and attacked by a shark, then it’s true that life can be larger than tall tales. Suffering these events may make him unlucky, but surviving them all makes him a lucky person.

Perhaps maybe his luck ran out in 2014 when he was indicted on federal charges for selling an unlicensed pesticide and obstructing justice.

Big Numbers

Winning the lottery can be more difficult to achieve than getting struck by lightning. The chances of winning the EuroMillions lottery jackpot, for example, are 1 in 139,838,160. It’s 1 in 258 million odds for the MegaMillions. The odds of winning any lottery’s jackpot are 1 in a lot.

lottery-odds

And yet multiple people have won lottery jackpots more than once. Some have won jackpots two, three, and even four times. Mathematics professor Joan Ginther has won the Texas lottery jackpot four times for a total of almost $21 million. If you take every grain of sand in the entire world and multiply that number by 18, then one in that number would be the odds of Ginther having done what she did.

Of course, she also has a PhD in Math from an elite university and she has spent tens of thousands of dollars buying scratch-offs for each game, which she hauled back to a hotel room in bags. By some accounts, Ginther may have even spent millions of dollars on tickets over the years. Her chances of winning were probably higher than the published odds because she waited to buy until late in the games, after the lottery operator announced that the winning tickets had not been sold yet, thus greatly increasing the possibility of buying a winner.

joan-ginther
Four-time Lottery Jackpot Winner Joan Ginther. Source: Philly.com.

If you ever see a job opening for a “Ticket Scratcher” in a Texas border town, let me know.

Until then, I will leave you with a table of approximate odds for some unlikely events. There is also a long source list below, including sources I did not use for double tornado strikes and houses that get crashed into by cars multiple times (this post is long enough already).

Remember, even with long odds, lightning can strike twice.

unlikely events
long-odds
Approximate odds for a series of unlikely events. MacLeans.ca

Sources (lots of them):

Fan Catches Dodgers Home Run: https://sports.yahoo.com/dodgers-fan-wearing-chase-utley-220629338.html
Fan Catches 2nd Home Run Ball: http://kwese.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/21076357/fan-snares-playoff-home-runs-dodger-stadium-wrigley-field
Likelihood of Catching Home Run Ball: http://www.espn.com/mlb/playoffs2005/news/story?id=2186452
Odds of Winning Powerball and Being Struck By Lightning: http://wncn.com/2016/01/12/odds-of-winning-powerball-jackpot-less-than-being-hit-by-lightning-twice/
Venezuela Spot Has Most Lightning Strikes: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/guinness-record-most-lightning-venezuela_n_4690219.html
NASA-funded strikes research: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/0107lightning.html
Vatican Struck Twice by Lightning: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/lightning-bolt-hit-vatican-not-1705156
Struck Twice: http://abcnews.go.com/US/texan-man-struck-lightning-day/story?id=20707448
Two Strikes for Rod, Two Decades Apart: http://time.com/3937179/lightning-strikes-man-twice-rod-wolfe-survivor/
Two Shark Attacks: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/09/west-australian-man-stable-after-second-shark-attack-in-10-years
World’s Unluckiest Man? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2385291/Worlds-unluckiest-man-Erik-Norrie-attacked-shark-survived-lightning-strike-rattlesnake-bite.html
Odds of Winning EuroMillions: https://www.euro-millions.com/odds-of-winning
Odds of Winning MegaMillions: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/powerball-mega-millions-lottery-odds-us/
Ginther, Four Time Lottery Jackpot Winner: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/lottery/Joan_Ginther_tops_other_multiple_winners_in_lottery_history.html
Cars Crash Into House Twice in One Week: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Car-Crashes-Into-Emerald-Hills-Home-Twice-In-Three-Days-439355313.html
Can Tornadoes Hit the Same Place Twice? http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46631270/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/can-tornadoes-hit-same-place-twice/#.WelzQjCX2Uk

17-lightning-strikes
Here are images from a June 2014 storm in which downtown Chicago’s skyscrapers were struck 17 times in the same evening.

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I am still laughing at the astronomical odds for me to read this considering we have never met in person and only came across the presence of each other's on this planet less than 2 years ago...

Great article, again, thanks for the education and the light-heartedness!

Namaste :)

Life is funny sometimes. There are so many coincidences and there is a great deal of luck. It's great to be here with you.

As far as I know The National Lightning map shows where the lightning strikes in last hour in US. Last week I read in the newspaper that there are approx. 16 million lightning storms every year.

I'll have to check that out. Thanks.

nice one @eric-boucher namaste ;)

Might-not-be-a-planet, just sayin ;)

lol did you read all of those articles to write this post? I need to win a lottery. Just once is enough :) I promise to buy steem for half of it :)

You have my support. Make sure you buy a ticket if you hope to win, though. Did I read everything? Most of it, but I'm fast at skimming also.

Nice and interesting article! I remember a show where they said that the chance of life forming by itself through chemical reactions is similar to the odds of picking up (by accident) a winning lottery ticket from the pavement every single day for a thousand days! - I might be wrong with the numbers but regardless of how you put it, the odds are astronomically small!

wow nice post of youuuuuu

That is very interesting. I once read about a golfer who got struck by lightning like 7 times in his life and is still kicking. I'll have to find that article...

I wonder how they come up with that hole-in-one number... I mean it is a lot more likely for Tiger Woods (well the young Tiger Woods) to get a hole in one vs say, someone who never plays golf in their life? :)

I once read about a golfer who got struck by lightning like 7 times in his life and is still kicking.

Are you referring to Roy Sullivan?

Roy Cleveland Sullivan (February 7, 1912 – September 28, 1983) was a United States park ranger in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Between 1942 and 1977, Sullivan was hit by lightning on seven different occasions and survived all of them.
[Wikipedia]

My goodness. I hadn't heard of that one, but with this type of subject matter, there probably are some other good ones out there, too. Gold courses may be particularly vulnerable places. I've seen a lot of articles about people getting struck on the greens.

Some people just get very lucky to win high odds prizes by choosing/being there at the right time. Then the others are unlucky for being a statistic in the odds of say struck by lightning twice or almost being struck. Just a matter of how things go.

That's what some statistics people say about multiple lottery winners; if there are that many chances to win (even with long odds), then 'anything can happen'.

Exactly and you got to be in it to win it, as the saying goes.

Here is a mind-bender for you... my friend of many years ago watched his wife get struck by lightning INSIDE their home. I wonder what those odds would be? She lived BTW.

Wow. Did it just blast through the roof or was it carried along the stovepipe or wiring somehow?

It was believed that it found the metal window frame, then arched across the looking for a ground. It found Jill just standing there barefoot. Burned her feet pretty badly.

Wow. I guess the advice to stay away from windows during lightning is real, then.

My friend Jill would agree!

I heard if you get struck by lighting that you get magnitized and have more of a chance to get hit again and again

That's one way to become more attractive (to paper clips and metal filings, at least). :)

What are the odds would you say of capturing these images? Taken just a few seconds apart, catching a lightning strike light up the 1am sky like mid-noon. Lightning is so cool.
IMG_8291.JPG
IMG_8290.JPG

Wow, great photos. I'm not a statistician, but I wish I could summon the gods when it's time to light a campfire.

Haha, thanks. I think I would prefer Thor’s hammer for that. Simply for the visual effects of me swinging Thor’s hammer ;)

Interesting article.