Human beings are such frail things. You step on a nail, you get tetanus, you die. You get too excited about eating pretzels, you choke, you die. You stand next to a guy, he sneezes on you, you die. We are the canaries in the coal mine of the universe, and we face mortality every single moment of every single day. We do -- these people don't ever face mortality because they're too busy giving it a wedgie and kicking its feet while it walks so it trips all over the place.

7 Charles Lightoller Survives A Lifelong Series Of Absurd Calamities

F.G.O. Stuart

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Charles Lightoller started sailing at the tender age of 13. Tragically, somebody put a "kick me" sign on his back, and, for the rest of his life, fate obliged. While setting out for an island, his ship was dismasted in a storm and had to get pulled into Rio for emergency repairs. During a rebellion and a smallpox epidemic. After leaving port, he sailed into another storm, got dismasted again, and washed up on an uninhabited island where he was marooned for eight days. Every time a little praying child wondered why God wasn't answering her, it's because He was somewhere else, trying to kill Lightoller.

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Too bad for God -- Lightoller had the devil's own luck.

For the next several years, God threw everything He had at Lightoller. A tropical storm assaulted him on one ship. A massive coal fire assaulted him on a different ship. He caught malaria. He was the final boss for causes of death, and none of them could figure out how to beat him. So when Harland and Wolff built the most gigantic boat in the world, the Titanic, who else would they hire to be the ship's second mate?

Lightoller banged the universe's wife, and it was coming after him with everything it had.

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"Yo, Nootaikok, can you do me a solid?"

As Lightoller sank with the Titanic, he was pinned to the deck by the tremendous suction of a zillion tons of sinking steel. However, instead of getting yanked to the bottom of the sea, the boilers under him exploded, launching him to the surface. With anyone else, that would sound like bullshit. With Lightoller, it only makes us wonder why he wasn't attacked by a giant squid at the same time.

After riding an explosion away from the biggest disaster in naval history, he rallied approximately 30 survivors onto a capsized lifeboat -- the very last lifeboat to be found. And, as the last one off that boat, he became the actual final Titanic survivor. If Lightoller was the star of a Final Destination movie, it would be 780 hours long and end with Death hanging itself out of frustration.