A Canadian man beat the unusual odds of being struck by lightning and winning the lottery when he walked away with a $1 million prize along with a coworker in the Atlantic Lotto 6/49 game this week.
Peter McCathie, of Amherst Shore, Nova Scotia, was struck by lightning when he was 14 years old
while on a boating trip, reported CTV News. Surviving the strike, he beat the odds — in a good way this time — when he collected his prize money at the Atlantic Lottery offices in Monctron, New Brunswick, Monday with coworker Diana Miller, according to the news network.
The drawing occurred on July 15, according to the Atlantic Lottery. CTV News reported that since McCathie owns the Amherst Shore Country Store where he and Miller purchased the ticket, he will receive an additional $10,000 from the lottery.
"I honestly expected to get hit by lightning again first," McCathie said of his odds of winning the Atlantic Lotto 6/49 game, noted CTV News.
McCathie said that he was trying to lock up a boat on a mostly sunny day when he was a teenager, but one cloud produced lightning that "came through the trees and hit me."
Sophie Leger, a mathematics professor at the University of Moncton, placed the odds of a person being hit by lightning and winning the lottery at
1 in 2.6 trillion, according to ABC News. Leger said that was able to come up with the odds not knowing the exact number of lottery tickets McCathie has bought in his lifetime.
"It's almost not possible, but it did happen," Leger told ABC News. "It shows that anything can happen in life."
According to the Postmedia Network, McCathie plans to use a portion of his winnings to take his wife of 30 years on a second honeymoon while Miller is planning to take a trip to Cancun, Mexico.
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