The man dubbed the world´s luckiest after cheating death seven times and winning the lottery is now the happiest – after giving away all his cash.

Music teacher Frano Selak survived plane and train crashes and other disasters before winning £600,000 five years ago in Croatia.

But now Mr Selak, 81, says he´s never been happier after selling his luxury home on a private island, giving his fortune to family and friends and moving back to a modest home in his home town Petrinja.

He kept the last bit of cash back for a hip replacement operation so he can keep up with his 60-year-old wife Katarina and to build a shrine to the Virgin Mary to give thanks for his luck.

“All I need at my age is my Katarina. Money would not change anything. When she arrived I knew then that I really did have a charmed, blessed life,” he explained.

“I never thought I was lucky to survive all my brushes with death. I thought I was unlucky to be in them in the first place,” he added.

His first escape was in 1962 when he was on a train from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik which derailed and plunged into an icy river, 17 people died but he made it to the riverbank.

A year later, he was thrown out of a plane on his first and only flight when a door flew open. This time 19 died but he landed in a haystack.

In the following years he survived a bus he was on skidding into a river, his car catching fire on a motorway, his car catching fire in a filling station, and being knocked down by a bus.

Finally – he hopes – in 1996, he was driving in the mountains when his Skoda careered through a crash barrier and over a 300ft drop – but he leapt clear at the last minute.

via Orange UK.