A winning Mega Millions lottery ticket is one of the most coveted items in modern capitalism. We all know that winning the lottery is rare, but with the Mega Millions now cresting over a billion, the odds of you actually walking home with the money are about 1 in 302,575,350. So play if you must, but keep this in mind: These rare occurrences are much more likely to happen to you then actually winning the lottery.
Cracking an egg with a double yolk
Imagine my surprise when I was making breakfast a few weeks back, and I cracked open three double yolk eggs in a row. True story. Apparently this happens a lot more often than you might think, as the odds for getting a double yolk is 1 in 1,000 according to egg purveyor Pete and Gerry’s.
Finding a four leaf clover
The four leaf clover is an established symbol of luck, which you’ll need if you’re hoping to win the lottery. Good news: Four leaf clovers are apparently relatively easy to find, with odds at just 1 in 10,000, according to a video from Scientific American.
Bowling a perfect game
Bowling a perfect game is incredibly difficult, and before you ask, no you cannot keep the bumpers up. For the average layman, the odds of bowling a perfect game — scoring a strike in every frame, resulting in a total of 300 points — is about 1 in 11,500 according to Golf Digest.
Getting stuck in an elevator
Elevators are a wonderful feat of human engineering, allowing us to transcend to a higher floor with the push of a button. But like all technology, elevators are prone to failure. Kings III says that the odds of getting stuck in the box is 1 in 100,000.
Being struck by lightning
Losing the lottery might make you feel like you want to stand in a field with an open umbrella during a thunderstorm. Well, being struck by lightning is still more likely than winning the Mega Millions. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the odds of you getting struck by lightning are less than one in a million. Luckily nearly 90% of those struck by lightning survive, so once you get out of the hospital, you can buy another lottery ticket.
Getting attacked by a shark
In case you missed it, we are currently in the thick of Shark Week. Sharks are some of nature’s most imposing predators, and the odds of a shark mistaking your leg for a delicious fish are about 1 in 4,332,817, according to the International Shark Attack File from the Florida Museum.
Dying in a plane crash
Maybe you’re feeling stressed out after surviving a lightning strike and a shark attack. Time to take a vacation! You know you can rest and relax on the flight, because according to the National Transportation Safety Board, the odds of dying on a commercial flight due to a crash is one in 29.4 million.
Giving birth to quintuplets
Raising one baby is difficult enough, but raising five at once sounds like a nightmare (apologies to any quintuplets reading this). Thankfully, your odds of having quintuplets are pretty high, with Very Well Family estimating that quintuplets occur in 1 in every 60 million births.
Flipping a coin and getting heads… 28 times in a row
A run of luck like this seems impossible, right? Flipping a coin and getting the same result more than two dozen times is incredibly unlikely. You’d probably doubt your own eyes — or your own sanity — if you saw it happen. But guess what? With odds of 1 in 268,435,456, it’s still more likely to happen than winning the Mega Millions lottery.