From bailing out of a start-up company and losing what could be worth 200 billion dollars, to surviving two atomic bombs in a span of three days, in today’s article, we take a look at 10 Unluckiest People in History.
1. Ronald Wayne
We’ve learned a lot about Apple founders, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, as the tech company changed the way we live and do business. But there was a third founder of the giant tech, who, at one point, owned 10 per cent of the company. His name is Ronald Wayne.
Wayne was an Apple founder for just 12 days before deciding to sell his share to Jobs and Wozniak for a mere $800. Considering the current company’s valuation of $2 trillion, Ronald Wayne’s shares could be worth 200 billion dollars today.
2. James Howells
In 2013, a British IT worker named James Howells threw away a hard drive with a digital wallet containing what was then known as a virtually worthless cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin. Fast-forward to 2021, a single bitcoin is now trading at about $37,000.
That means that the 7,500 bitcoins contained on the hard drive would be worth in the region of $275 million. James Howells is now offering his city council 71.7 million dollars if it allows him to excavate a landfill site where he believes the hard drive has been disposed of.
3. Costis Mitsotakis
Every Christmas in Spain, there’s a lottery draw so massive it’s called El Gordo, which translates as “the fat one.” In 2011, the jackpot was up to $950 million, the biggest ever.
Although some residents of Sodeto were reluctant to pay for the $26 ticket due to the crippling economic recession that Spain was experiencing at that time, each of the 70 families in town chipped in, buying at least a portion of a ticket. All except one man.
Filmmaker Costis Mitsotakis lived outside of town and the homemaker’s association ladies did not bother visiting and selling him the tickets. Defying the incredible odds, Sodeto hit the jackpot, and each of the village families walked away with prize money, ranging from $130,000 on the low end to several millions on the high end.
4. Melanie Martinez
Known as the ‘unluckiest woman in America’, Martinez seems to be cursed when it comes to hurricanes and houses. While living in Louisiana, the school bus driver has lost five houses to hurricanes in the storm-prone area.
There was Betsy in 1965, Juan in 1985, George in 1998, Katrina in 2005, and Isaac in 2012. That’s across a time span of 50 years. Her last known home loss was particularly unfortunate. It happened a few months after her house received a $20,000 reality TV makeover.
5. Jason and Jenny Cairns
This couple from England has an uncanny ability for finding trouble when they travel, having been unfortunate enough to be on vacation in three cities undergoing terrorist attacks.
First, they found themselves in New York City during the tragic events of 9/11. Then in 2005, they chose London as a safer destination, and the city suffered a series of suicide bombings.
Finally, Jason and Jenny were visiting Mumbai at the time of the 2008 attack on several landmarks. You could say they were actually lucky to have avoided harm.
6. John Lyne
Having been given the unofficial title of ‘Britain’s unluckiest man’, John Lyne boasts a CV crammed full of unlucky, and perhaps hapless, events. The Brit estimates that he has had 16 major accidents in his life.
This includes: falling off a horse and cart, being run over by a van, falling down a man hole, lightning strikes, car crashes, an accident in a mine, and the clincher: falling out of a tree and then breaking his arm in a bus crash on his way back from the hospital.
7. Dede Koswara
Dede Koswara was born healthy. But at age 10, after he fell and scraped his knee in the forests of Indonesia, small warts sprouted around the wound. Slowly, they spread to his feet and hands.
For many years, he watched helplessly as his limbs broke out in a swath of grotesque bark-like warts that sapped his energy and limited his mobility.
Now he shuffles along on blackened, bloated feet – a prisoner of his own mutinous body. His mysterious ailment cost him his marriage, career, and independence. He was forced by his poverty to join a traveling freak show, billed as the Tree Man of Java.
8. Henry Zeigland
In 1883, Henry Zeigland broke off a relationship with his girlfriend, who then killed herself from the distress. Her brother went so crazy that he vowed to kill Zeigland no matter what.
He hunted him down and shot him. Believing him dead, the brother then turned the gun on himself and ended his own life. But Ziegland wasn’t dead. The bullet had only grazed his face and then lodged in a large tree behind him.
But the story didn’t end there. Years later, Ziegland decided to cut down the tree, which still had the bullet lodged in it. The task seemed so tough that he decided to blow it up with a few sticks of dynamite. The explosion sent the bullet out straight into Ziegland’s head, killing him instantly.
9. Roy Sullivan
Perhaps the most famously unlucky person on this list, Roy Sullivan, is best known for being hit by lightning, not once, but seven times. The former park ranger was nicknamed the ‘human lightning rod’ and features in the Guinness World Records for surviving more lightning strikes than anyone else in recorded history. In a particularly unlucky period, he was struck four times in five years, between 1969 and 1973.
10. Tsutomu Yamaguchi
The only officially recorded survivor of both the atomic bombs detonated in Japan during World War II, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was just 29 years-old when he narrowly avoided death twice in three days.
On 6 August 1945, Yamaguchi, a young engineer, was visiting Hiroshima. Seconds after getting off a tram at 8.15 am he saw a massive flash of light and was knocked to the ground by the force of the bomb.
The Nagasaki native then returned to his hometown, only to get caught up in the second blast on August 9, just as he was relaying news of his previous ordeal. The survivor, known as ‘twice bombed’, went on to live until the age of 93. And these are the 10 Unluckiest People in History.