When you think of dangerous events, you imagine injury, loss, or even death. Yet, among the most perilous incidents there lies a strange silver lining: 10 potentially deadly accidents have astonishingly acted as catalysts for curing serious medical ailments. Below we explore each extraordinary case, from lightning bolts to earthquakes, that turned catastrophe into recovery.
Why These 10 Potentially Deadly Accidents Matter
10 Blind Man Gets Sight Restored After He Is Struck By Lightning
In 1971 Edwin Robinson endured a horrific truck crash that robbed him of sight and left him partially deaf. Nearly a decade later, on June 9, 1980, while attempting to rescue his pet chicken from a downpour outside his Falmouth, Maine home, a bolt of lightning struck him, sending him crashing to the ground and leaving him momentarily stunned.
That very night, both his vision and hearing returned as if by magic. The story quickly captured media attention; Robinson and his wife Doris fielded an avalanche of phone calls, to the point where they had to detach the handset from the landline just to catch a few winks. Television producers also knocked on their door, eager to feature the miracle.
Despite the whirlwind of publicity, the Robinsons walked away with only a modest hundred‑dollar check and reimbursement for travel to various studios. They consciously declined a lucrative television deal that would have granted the network full rights to their tale.
Their refusal stemmed from a belief that the station would sensationalize the event rather than spotlight the couple’s life after the restoration. Doris added that she would have preferred a film focusing on their post‑accident journey, not merely the lightning strike itself.
9 Man Gets Sight Restored After He Is Headbutted By Horse
Don Karkos answered the call to arms after the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, joining the U.S. Navy and later serving aboard the tanker USS Rapaden.
The vessel’s mission was to refuel Allied ships across the North Atlantic, a sea teeming with German U‑boats. In 1942, an explosion aboard the Rapaden propelled a metal fragment into Karkos’s forehead, striking just above his right eye.
He lost consciousness, awoke in an Icelandic hospital, and was told he had gone blind in his right eye. Doctors even suggested removal, but he refused. After returning stateside, he worked in a mill and eventually opened a horse farm in 1978, though the loss of his eye made everyday navigation a challenge, especially as cataracts began clouding his left eye.
Six‑four years later, while prepping his horse My Buddy Chimo for a race, the animal slammed its head into his already blinded right eye, knocking him against a wall. That night he felt ill, yet by morning discovered he could see again with that very eye—the same one the horse had struck.
8 Woman Cured Of Multiple Sclerosis After Lightning Strike
On August 17, 1994, Mary Clamser, a longtime multiple‑sclerosis sufferer, experienced a life‑changing event when a bolt of lightning struck her Oklahoma home while she was taking a shower.
MS had gradually robbed her of leg control over 22 years, eventually confining her to a wheelchair. During the shower, one hand gripped the metal shower bar while the other clutched the toilet flush handle, and metal braces on her legs completed an electrical pathway.
The lightning surged through the household wiring, coursing through her body and rendering her unconscious. When she awoke in hospital, a physician was still checking for fractures, yet she could feel the doctor’s hands on her previously paralyzed limbs.
Within three weeks she was walking unaided, shedding her braces, and two months later she confidently slipped into high heels—proof that the strike had undone the MS damage.
7 Man Regains Hearing After Earthquake
On August 23, 2011, a 5.8‑magnitude quake rattled Louisa County, Virginia, sending tremors across the East Coast and prompting evacuations of the Pentagon, Capitol and several hospitals.
For Robert Valderzak, a Washington, D.C. veteran who had gone deaf after a severe fall in June that fractured his skull, the shaking proved fortuitous. He had been living with conductive hearing loss, relying on lip‑reading and a special microphone.
While a patient at the Veterans Affairs Hospital, Valderzak’s three sons and daughter were visiting. When the quake subsided, he realized he could hear his son’s voice clearly for the first time since the injury.
Doctors theorized that the seismic vibrations, coupled with medication, helped drain fluid trapped in his middle ear—a common cause of conductive loss—allowing his hearing to return. Valderzak describes the event as nothing short of a miracle.
6 Lightning Cured A Man’s Cancer
In 1855, English farmer Reuben Stephenson was tilling a field near Langtoft when a bolt of lightning struck his plow, killing the two draft horses attached to it and leaving Stephenson gravely wounded.
Dr. Allison tended to Stephenson’s injuries and, during treatment, noticed a malignant tumor on the farmer’s lip. Planning an operation, he was stunned to discover the tumor had vanished by the time Stephenson recovered enough for surgery.
Allison concluded that the lightning strike had somehow eradicated the cancer, attributing Stephenson’s cure to the extraordinary electrical discharge.
5 Teenager Stops Using Prescription Glasses After Getting Struck By Lightning
In July 2017, sixteen‑year‑old Faith Mobley was washing dishes at a McDonald’s drive‑through in Haleyville, Alabama, when a lightning bolt struck the restaurant, traveling through the pipe system to where she stood.
The current coursed through her headset and exited through her left foot, leaving a sizable hole in her shoe and a burn on her foot. She lost consciousness but was revived by a coworker who called emergency services.
After regaining consciousness, Mobley discovered her eyesight had dramatically improved; the glasses she’d worn for years were no longer necessary, and even the color of her irises had shifted.
4 Man Cured Of Mental Illness After Shooting Himself In The Head
In February 1988, the Associated Press reported a harrowing yet astonishing story of a man known only as George, who unintentionally cured his obsessive‑compulsive disorder during a failed suicide attempt five years earlier.
George’s OCD manifested as relentless hand‑washing and showering rituals driven by an overwhelming fear of germs, eventually costing him his job and education and plunging him into deep depression.
Armed with a .22‑caliber rifle, he aimed at his brain through his mouth, pulling the trigger. The bullet pierced his skull, lodging in the left frontal lobe, but did not kill him. Surgeons later extracted the projectile, which had damaged the brain region responsible for his compulsions.
Post‑operation, George’s IQ rebounded to its pre‑OCD level, he secured employment, returned to school, and achieved top grades. Physician’s Weekly labeled the episode a ‘successful radical surgery.’
3 Woman Recovers Sight After Falling And Hitting Her Head
In 1993, Mary Ann Franco survived a severe automobile crash that left her with spinal injuries and induced blindness.
On August 2015, while walking across her Florida living room, she tripped, striking her head on what she thought was a fireplace and fracturing her neck in the process.
Following neck surgery, she awoke from anesthesia to find her sight fully restored, marking a dramatic reversal of her previous blindness.
2 Woman Cured Of Her Super Senses After Getting Struck By Lightning
In January 2017, researchers at Trinity College Dublin published a case study describing a woman, identified only as AB, whose synesthesia—a condition causing cross‑sensory perceptions—was temporarily eliminated after a lightning strike.
Synesthesia can make individuals taste words, hear colors, or feel ambient emotions, often leading to distress and medication use. AB experienced these mixed senses before the incident.
The electrical discharge appeared to erase the condition, though it later resurfaced, indicating a fleeting cure.
1 Blind Man Cured After Falling Down Stairs
In 2013, sixty‑eight‑year‑old Pierre‑Paul Thomas, born with congenital nystagmus that rendered him functionally blind, suffered a fall down the stairs in his Montreal home.
The tumble shattered several facial bones, including those surrounding his eyes, prompting immediate surgical repair.
During the operation, a plastic surgeon suggested correcting his eyes as part of the procedure, and Thomas consented.
Surgeons removed the cataract that had been responsible for his blindness, effectively restoring his vision, although his underlying nystagmus remained untreatable.
Doctors hypothesize that Thomas’s sight was present but obscured by the cataract; the accident merely led to the surgery that uncovered it.