Canadian lightning strike survivor wins $1 million lottery

Peter McCathie quite literally defied the odds.

With his lottery prize, McCathie has beaten even slimmer odds: The chance of winning the Atlantic Lotto is about one in 13,983,816. The probability of a man getting to experience both these incidents was calculated to be a staggering one in 2.6 trillion! They recently found they had won a guaranteed $1 million prize from the July 15 draw.

Peter McCathie and his lottery co-player, Diana Miller, picked up their windfall in Moncton Monday, CTV News reported.

McCathie said he’ll use his winnings to pay off some debt, and maybe take a few days off now and then, which will let him pursue his passions of cooking and fishing.

Tap here to view on News app.”We were out on a boat trip and when we got in the water’s pretty shallow”, McCathie told CTV News.

McCarthie was just 14 when he was struck by lightning during a boating trip. The lottery victor isn’t the only one to have been struck by lightning in his family. McCathie said he was attempting to lock up a boat when the bolt came from a single cloud hanging overhead. McCarthie wants to take his wife of over 30 years on a second honeymoon. Being the daughter of a lucky father, she too survived the mishap! However, one thing that was not considered in the calculation was the total number of lottery tickets that McCathie had purchased until now.

Leger worked through the equation – noting that she didn’t know the exact number of lottery tickets McCathie has bought in his lifetime – to come up with the near-impossible odds. She added, “It’s nearly not possible, but it did happen”. “It shows that anything can happen in life”.