For Rare Disease Day: A one in two thousand chance ...

Your chances of experiencing a giant asteroid collision in your lifetime
are actually a little better than developing ET.

It's almost Rare Disease Day (February 29), and you've got a rare disease if you have ET; only about one in every 2,300 people develop essential thrombocytosis in their lifetime.

Just for fun, here are 10 other things that have about a one in two thousand chance of happening:

1. Experiencing a collision between earth and a giant asteroid. Those were the odds Carl Sagan, space maven, gave in his book, "Pale Blue Dot," to that catastrophe happening within anyone's lifetime.

2, Getting hit by falling space junk. Odds are different for different bits of junk, but back in 2011, the chance of getting bonked by the German ROSAT x-ray telescope was about one in 2,000. 

3. Experiencing death or serious accident in a swimming pool. The Rand Corporation figured this one out back in 1993. My guess is that there's a better than 2,000 in one chance that some of these accidents were preceded by alcohol consumption and the words, "Watch this!" 

4. Dying from a slip-and-fall in the bathtub or shower. This site has a whole bunch of other odds of "funny stuff" happening, though most of this stuff doesn't seem all that funny. Like that your chance of getting away with murder are two to one.

5. Clyde Black winning the Dallas County, Iowa, corn yield contest two years in a row. Yep, astounding as that may seem, Clyde DID win that contest due to an "unusually long" and "freakish" growing season, reported by Wallace's Farmer in February of 1922.

6. Going into anaphylactic shock due to an allergic reaction. That's the estimate of Dr. Bruce Dobozin in his book, "Allergies: The Complete Guide to Diagnosis, Treatment, and Daily Management."

7. Your parents having children together after they met for the first time. The odds of that one of those kids turned out to be you is even smaller. Here's a cool chart that explains it.

8. Being bitten by Uruguayan soccer player Luis Suarez. The math looks kind of dodgy on this one, but apparently Suarez has a habit of biting opponents. As several stories about Suarez point out, your chances of being bitten by a shark, 3.7 million to one, are far lower than being bitten by Suarez.

9. The odds of hitting an iceberg at sea. This is really pretty fascinating. Despite the methods for tracking and marking icebergs (satellites, sonar, and day-glo paint) two iceberg-ship collisions occur every year. Remember the unsinkable Titanic.

10. Being selected as an astronaut. The odds of being selected as an astronaut apply only to the pool of astronaut candidates. So probably your chances are way higher than 2,000 to one. This site explains why.

Related: Rare Disease Day: February 29 

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