High School Class of 1958 Beat Unbelievable Odds

A man who was preparing to reach out to his fellow Iowa high school graduates for their 60th reunion was surprised to find that the entire class of 1958 is still alive. Del Matheson would have been downright shocked had he known the exact odds at the time that all 14 members of the Ringsted High School graduating class were still among the living. According to the Des Moines Register, they are 177 million-to-1.

All of the dozen-plus members are now between the ages of 77 and 79. To put it in perspective, the odds of being struck by lightning in the US in any given year are about 1 in 700,000. And while Powerball lists the odds of winning its own jackpot at 1 in 292,201,338, Matheson and company still feel like they've won something akin to the lottery. They even joke about who will die first. "It's like a contest," he told the Register. (More high school stories.)