Man Struck By Lightning Hours After Buying Lottery Tickets

It is almost cliche now, you know the saying, "you have a better chance of being struck by lightning than winning the lottery." It is true, officials of the Mega Millions lottery said that the odds of winning lottery were about 176 million to one. Americans have a much higher chance of being struck by lightning, at 775,000 to one over the course of a year, depending on the part of the country and the season, according to the National Weather Service. That theory held true for a Kansas man who was struck by lightning hours after buying three Mega Millions lottery tickets. 

Bill Isles, 48, bought three tickets in the record $656 million lottery Thursday at a Wichita, Kansas grocery store. On the way to his car, Isles said he commented to a friend: "I've got a better chance of getting struck by lightning" than winning the lottery.

Later at about 9:30 p.m., Isles was standing in the back yard of his Wichita duplex, when he saw a flash and heard a boom, lightning! Isles, a volunteer weather spotter for the National Weather Service, had his portable ham radio with him because he was checking the skies for storm activity. "It threw me to the ground quivering," Isles said in a telephone interview on Saturday. "It kind of scrambled my brain and gave me an irregular heartbeat." He crawled on the ground to get the radio, which had been thrown from his hand.

Isles was taken by ambulance to a hospital and kept overnight for observation. Doctors wanted to make sure his heartbeat was back to normal. He suffered no burns or other physical effects from the strike, which he said could have been worse because his yard has a power line pole and wires overhead.