From Fear of Landing (the art of not hitting the ground too hard), November 1, 2013:
The Story Behind an Unbelievable Photograph....
And from Aviation Geek Club:
The main picture in this was taken by Jim Meads on Sep. 13, 1962. It was published in newspapers all around the world at the time and, as it was so widely seen, it naturally caught the attention of manufacturer Martin-Baker.
At the time Jim lived next door to de Havilland test pilot Bob Sowray in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, and on this day both of their wives had gone clothes shopping in London. Bob had mentioned that he was due to fly a Lightning that day, and later Jim’s children asked if they could go to watch the flight. Although Jim was a photographer, he wouldn’t usually take his camera on an outing like this. However, on this occasion he decided he would get a picture of his neighbour flying. The camera he took had just two exposures on it.
The spectators found a good vantage point close to the threshold of de Havilland’s Hatfield airfield, and waited for the Lightning to return. As XG332 came in on final approach, at around 200ft high its nose pitched up and the pilot ejected. The Lightning had become uncontrollable after an engine fire had weakened a tailplane actuator.
Jim took one photo soon after the ejection, and as can be seen caught the pilot inverted with his parachute still unopened and the Lightning plummeting earthwards close to him. The tractor driver heard the bang of the ejection seat and is seen after quickly turning around to look at what was going on, no doubt very relieved he wasn’t working further over in the field. Jim’s one remaining picture recorded the subsequent plume of thick black smoke after the jet had crashed.Fortunately the pilot survived after coming down in a greenhouse full of tomatoes. He suffered multiple breaks of his limbs and cuts from the shower of glass that rained down on him after going through the roof of the greenhouse. However, it hadn’t been Bob Sowray at the controls; he had decided to let fellow test pilot George Aird carry out the flight.....
....MUCH MORE
And back to Fear of Landing
....Meanwhile, George Aird landed on a greenhouse and fell through the roof, breaking both legs as he landed unconscious on the ground. The water from the sprinkler system for the tomatoes woke him. He’s reported to have said that his first thought was that he must be in heaven.....
....MUCH MORE
Previously:
"The Deceptions of Luck"
How Luck Works
"Luck vs. skill: What Bill Gross and Bill Miller have in common"
Investing Tips From the Dalai Lama
The Market Pays Luck as Well as Skill
Oaktree's "Howard Marks on Luck and Skill in Investing"
Remember When the Unluckiest Man in the World Won the Lottery?
"5 things you didn't know about luck"
How Big Data and Poker Playing Bots Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling
Testing For Luck
More on The Top Earning Hedge Fund Managers and The Metaphysics of Moolah
Fama/French: "Luck versus Skill in Mutual Fund Performance" (LMVTX)
A Glossary of Luck
"Luckiest Woman on Earth" who Won Lottery Four Times Outed as Stanford University Statistics PhD
Gaming the System: Are Hedge Fund Managers Talented, or Just Good at Fooling Investors?
In 1995, a wounded 35-year-old woman named Anat Ben-Tov gave an interview from her hospital room in Tel Aviv. She had just survived her second bus bombing in less than a year. “I have no luck, or I have all the luck,” she told reporters. “I’m not sure which it is.”
The news story caught the eyes of Norwegian psychologist Karl Halvor Teigen, now an emeritus professor at the University of Oslo. He had been combing through newspapers to glean insights into what people consider lucky and unlucky. Over the following years, he and other psychologists, along with economists and statisticians, would come to understand that while people often think of luck as random chance or a supernatural force, it is better described as subjective interpretation.
“One might ask, do you consider yourself lucky because good things happen to you, or do good things happen to you because you consider yourself lucky?” says David J. Hand, author of The Improbability Principle, emeritus professor of mathematics and a senior research investigator at Imperial College, London.
*****
Anargyros Nicholas Karabourniotis, commonly known as Archie Karas, is a Greek-American gambler, high roller, poker player, and pool shark famous for the largest and longest documented winning streak in casino gambling history, simply known as The Run, when he drove to Las Vegas with $50 in December 1992 and then turned a $10,000 loan into more than $40 million by the beginning of 1995, only to lose it all later that year.Wikipedia
"There's Good Luck, There's Bad Luck And Then There's This Chap"
Have I ever told you about Tsutomu "Lucky" Yamaguchi?*....
The Guy Who Survived The Sinking of the Titanic. And the Britannic. And the Alcantara. And the Donegal. And the Near-Sinking of the Olympic
I'm thinking if I were going aboard back in the day I would be tempted to ask if that Arthur fellow was on this ship.
According to one source his reaction to the grinding sound of the collision with the iceberg was "What now."....
Good Luck, Bad Luck: Meet Violet Jessop