Sideswipe: July 19: Three of a kind

Megan spied these three sentinels while out walking.

Mr Lucky

In 1962, Croatian music teacher Frane Selak was riding from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik when his train jumped the rails and plunged into a river. Seventeen people died, but he escaped with hypothermia. A year later a plane door malfunctioned and he was blown into midair. The plane crashed and he landed in a haystack. Three years after that he was riding a bus that skidded into a river; he swam to safety. ("By this time my friends had stopped visiting me," he said.) In 1970 his car caught fire as he was driving it. He escaped before the fuel tank exploded. Three years after that, another car caught fire; his hair was singed but he was otherwise unharmed. In 1995 he was knocked down by a Zagreb bus but sustained only minor injuries. The following year he nearly collided with a United Nations truck; he crashed through a mountain guardrail but managed to leap clear of the car. In 2003, two days after his 73rd birthday, he won a lottery jackpot worth a million dollars. He married and bought two houses and a boat, and in 2010 gave away most of the rest to friends and family.

Marriage advice for young ladies

Out of context American

1. "While in Korea, I was casually talking to a friend on the bus in a regular speaking voice. Not even a minute later, the lady in front of us turned around in her seat and very casually said, 'Please calm down'. I guess American volume is noticeably louder."

2. "When I went to Italy with a friend, I couldn't figure out why everyone greeted me in English before I said a word. I don't wear running shoes outside of the gym, I dress pretty posh, I can't remember the last time I owned a baseball cap, and I try to have a basic grasp on the local language. How could they tell I'm American? My friend told me, 'It's because you're smiling at them'."

3. "Americans are amazed by old things. My girlfriend used to work on a farm in an estate in the UK and would often have Americans in awe of the old buildings. One time someone said, 'Some of these buildings are older than my country'."

Slow crime day