Did you know you can be struck by lightning from a storm as far as 16 kilometers away? I didn’t, but if there is one person out there who knew that it was Roy Sullivan. Over the course of his life, Roy, who died in 1983 at the age of 71 earned several nicknames including “Human Lightning Rod” and “Spark Ranger,” and for good reason! He was struck by lightning a total of seven times. Roy first was struck by lightning in 1942 when he was hiding inside of a fire lookout tower from a storm (he was a park ranger at Shenandoah National Park in the US). He ended up running outside after the tower was struck a few times, it was then that he himself was struck! This lightning strike ended up leaving a hole in his shoe and burning a portion of his leg. The likelihood statistically of being hit by lightning is 1/700000 or 0.000143%, so Roy was already pretty unlucky after having been struck this time. His bad luck continued and by 1972 Roy had been struck a total of 4 times (Source). It was after this that Sullivan was quoted as saying “I have never been a fearful man, but I have to tell you the truth. When I hear it thunder now, I feel a little shaky.” At this point the likelihood of Roy being struck those 4 times was about 0.000000000000000416%.
Roy’s bad luck did not end there, oh no, he was struck again in 1973, in what is a most interesting story. Roy was out on patrol when he saw a storm cloud forming. He tried to drive away from it, but he claims the cloud was following him! Thinking he out-ran the cloud he finally got out of his truck and was struck (sneaky cloud). Clouds continued to be out to get poor Roy as in June of 1976 he again noticed a Cloud “following” him, tried to run away but was struck by lightning again!
Sullivan’s death did not come as a result of a lightning strike, but rather a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. I can’t exactly blame him, I don’t know if I could live with the fear of being struck by lightning every time I went outside. There is only a 0.00000000000000000000000000124 % chance of being hit by lightning 7 times!
RIP Roy Sullivan.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Sullivan
http://mentalfloss.com/article/66863/meet-man-struck-lightning-7-times
http://www.avclub.com/article/park-ranger-roy-sullivan-was-struck-lightning-seve-232615
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0623_040623_lightningfacts.html