The 10 Unluckiest People in History: Struck by Lightning Multiple Times, Even Their Tombstones Got Hit!

These 10 people have the worst luck in history—you’ll gasp at every twist, so keep scrolling to see who’s unlucky enough to get struck by lightning… even after death! 
TOP 10. Tsutomu Yamaguchi

Tsutomu Yamaguchi is the only person on record to survive both the 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs. A Mitsubishi naval engineer, he was in Hiroshima for work when the first bomb hit—he later recalled a blinding flash before blacking out. Burned and half-deaf, he dragged himself back to Nagasaki… only for the second bomb to detonate as he showed up to work on August 9. “I thought Hiroshima’s mushroom cloud had tracked me down,” he said. Miraculously, his family survived too; he lived with radiation effects until 2010.

TOP 9. Dede Koswara


Meet Dede Koswara, aka the “Tree Man”—his curse started with a tiny knee scrape from a tree fall in Indonesia. What should’ve been a minor ouch turned into a nightmare: weird warts exploded from the wound, spreading to his hands, feet, and face until he was covered in bark-like growths that left him barely able to move. At one point, 3-foot “branches” were sticking out of his feet! The rare condition ruined his marriage and left him broke. In 2008, docs even used a chainsaw to hack off 13 pounds of rotting tissue—but the warts grew back faster than you can say “bad luck.”

TOP 8. John Wade Argen


This Florida guy calls himself “the unluckiest human alive”—and honestly, we can’t argue. John Wade Argen got struck by lightning while leaning on a metal sink during a storm… but that’s just the warm-up. He’s also been held up at gunpoint, stabbed in 2008, and bitten by TWO snakes at the same time in 2009. Skeptics think he’s making it up, but Argen swears every terrible thing is 100% true.

TOP 7. Adolphe Sax


The guy who invented the saxophone had a childhood so chaotic, it’s a miracle he lived to make music. Born in 1814 Belgium to a musical family, Adolphe Sax cheated death more times as a kid than most people do in a lifetime: fell out a window, got clobbered by a brick, swallowed a pin, chugged acid, got burned, nearly drowned, and survived a gunpowder blast. Even the sax was an accident—it came from a 1845 side project with his dad. He patented it in 1846, sold his horns, taught at Paris Conservatory, and eventually died of cancer in 1894.

TOP 6. John Lyne


John Lyne is low-key Britain’s unluckiest legend—he survived 16 major disasters, including lightning strikes, three car crashes, and a quarry rockfall that smashed 8 of his teeth. His bad luck started at birth: he was the sickliest kid in the family, with underdeveloped lungs that needed steroids to keep him breathing. At 18 months old, he chugged disinfectant and barely made it through emergency stomach pumpings. As a teen, he broke his arm falling out of a tree… then re-broke the SAME arm later that day in a car crash on the way home from the hospital. Ouch.

TOP 5. Violet Jessop


Violet Jessop is the queen of surviving maritime disasters—her story is straight out of a movie. In 1911, she was a stewardess on the RMS Olympic when it crashed into a Navy cruiser. A year later? She was on the Titanic when it hit an iceberg and sank. Then, during WWI, she worked as a nurse on the HMHS Britannic… which sank after hitting a mine. She lived through ALL THREE. If there’s a “surviving sinking ships” masterclass, she’s the teacher.

TOP 4. Melanie Martinez


Surviving one hurricane is a miracle—surviving five? That’s a curse. Melanie Martinez, known as the unluckiest woman alive, lost four homes to hurricanes: Betsy (1965), Juan (1985), Georges (1988), and Katrina (2005). A reality show took pity on her and renovated her house for free in 2012 (a $20k glow-up!). But just months later, Hurricane Isaac rolled in and destroyed the new digs. Talk about adding insult to injury!

TOP 3. Roy Sullivan


They say lightning never strikes twice—but Roy Sullivan didn’t get the memo. This park ranger was struck by lightning seven times between 1942 and 1977, earning him the iconic nickname “Human Lightning Rod” and a Guinness World Record. The strikes cost him a toe, his eyebrows, and left him covered in burns—and he also had run-ins with 22 bears on the job! Yet somehow, he never developed a fear of going outside. Bold move.

TOP 2. Ann Elizabeth Hodges


On November 26, 1954, Ann Elizabeth Hodges of Alabama had the worst “stay-at-home day” ever: a meteor crashed through her ceiling and hit her while she was chilling on the couch. She’s the only person in history to get injured by a falling meteorite—and she only got a big bruise! The 8.5-pound “Sylacauga meteorite” made her famous… but also sparked a fight with her landlord, who tried to claim the rock. “It hit me—God clearly meant it for ME,” Hodges fired back. Fair point.

TOP 1. Walter Summerford


Walter Summerford is widely hailed as the unluckiest person to ever walk (and then not walk) the Earth. A British WWI officer, he got struck by lightning on the Belgian front and was paralyzed from the waist down. In 1924, another lightning strike while he was fishing somehow gave him back some leg movement—win! But in 1930, a third strike hit him, leaving him fully paralyzed. He died two years later… and his bad luck didn’t even stop there. In 1936, lightning struck his tombstone and shattered it to bits. Dude couldn’t catch a break—even in death.