Of course, coincidences happen all the time: we were just thinking of someone when they call us on the phone, or we have this song in mind when it suddenly plays on the radio. Most of the time they don’t mean much, but every once in awhile there is a coincidence that’s outright spooky, or one that has a major impact on world events. When these coincidences are positive in nature, we call them synchronicity or even serendipity; when they are not, however, we call them catastrophes.
10. Two Finnish Brothers
This one is strange no matter what way one looks at it. In 2002 a pair of 70-year-old identical twin brothers from Raahe, Finland were hit and killed by trucks while riding their bicycles in a snowstorm. The catch? They were killed in separate accidents on the same day along the same stretch of road only about a mile apart. Additionally, as the second accident occurred just two hours after the first, the second brother hadn’t even learned that his brother had been killed earlier (thereby eliminating suicide as a possible explanation) and making this truly one for the record books. Of course, unusual coincidences between identical twins are not unheard of; there are dozens of cases on record of twins separated at birth reuniting years later to discover they possess similar mannerisms, food preferences, work at similar jobs, etc. and, in one case, even married and divorced spouses with the same name, and then remarried another person also with the same name! So why not die the same way, on the same day, on the same road?
9. Double Homicide – 157 Years Apart
In a somewhat grisly coincidence, it seems that two women, Barbara Forrest and Mary Ashford, were both victims of a similar crime committed in the tiny village of Erdington, some five miles outside of Birmingham in England. Both twenty-year olds—who happened to share the same birthday—had been raped and strangled, their bodies were found 300 yards apart, and both had been found on the same day—May 27th—157 years apart (1817 and 1974)! Even more remarkable, both had just visited a friend that evening, both had changed into a new dress that night, and both had gone to a dance (where they presumably met their killer). Still not remarkable enough for you? How about the fact that the man accused in both their crimes was named Thornton, and that both Thornton’s were eventually acquitted for the crime? Reincarnation? Coincidence? Who knows?
8.Golden Scarab
From The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche: “A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to the golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata) which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment. I must admit that nothing like it ever happened to me before or since, and that the dream of the patient has remained unique in my experience.†– Carl Jung
7.Revenge Killing
In 1883, Henry Ziegland broke off a relationship with his girlfriend who, out of distress, committed suicide. The girl’s enraged brother hunted down Ziegland and shot him. Believing he had killed Ziegland, the brother then took his own life. In fact, however, Ziegland had not been killed. The bullet had only grazed his face, lodging into a tree. It was a narrow escape. Years later, Ziegland decided to cut down the same tree, which still had the bullet in it. The huge tree seemed so formidable that he decided to blow it up with dynamite. The explosion propelled the bullet into Ziegland’s head, killing him.
6. Falling Baby
In 1930s Detroit, a man named Joseph Figlock was to become an amazing figure in a young (and, apparently, incredibly careless) mother’s life. As Figlock was walking down the street, the mother’s baby fell from a high window onto Figlock. The baby’s fall was broken and Figlock and the baby were unharmed. A year later, the selfsame baby fell from the selfsame window, again falling onto Mr. Figlock as he was passing beneath. Once again, both of them survived the event.
5. Crossword Puzzle Gives Away D-Day Invasion Codewords
In what has to be one of the biggest long-shots in history, in May of 1944 retired school teacher Leonard Dawes, who had been compiling the daily crossword puzzle for London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper for over twenty years, put together a series of puzzles that somehow managed to include the names of two of the landing beaches—Utah and Omaha—along with several other super secret codewords like Overlord, Mulberry, and Juno nobody outside of General Eisenhower’s staff was supposed to know. Assuming Dawes was a German agent, they instantly interrogated the man, only to release him a short time later once they became convinced the words were entirely randomly chosen. While the chances of inadvertently using one of the codewords is not remarkable, Dawes puzzles contained no fewer than five codewords—all over the course of two weeks. The odds for such a thing happening has to be considered close to one-in-a-billion, but I’ll leave that for the mathematicians to figure out.
4.Royal Coincidence
In Monza, Italy, King Umberto I, went to a small restaurant for dinner, accompanied by his aide-de-camp, General Emilio Ponzia- Vaglia. When the owner took King Umberto’s order, the King noticed that he and the restaurant owner were virtual doubles, in face and in build. Both men began discussing the striking resemblances between each other and found many more similarities.
1. Both men were born on the same day, of the same year, (March 14th, 1844).
2. Both men had been born in the same town.
3. Both men married a woman with same name, Margherita.
4. The restauranteur opened his restaurant on the same day that King Umberto was crowned King of Italy.
5. On the 29th July 1900, King Umberto was informed that the restauranteur had died that day in a mysterious shooting accident, and as he expressed his regret, he was then assassinated by an anarchist in the crowd.
3. Lee Harvey Oswald Employed at the Texas School Book Depository
There may be literally thousands of people out there at any given moment who would like to kill the President of the United States. Of these, only a tiny fraction actually possess the means to do so (skilled with a firearm or explosives, etc.) and of these, almost none of them will ever be afforded the opportunity to do so. This is what makes Oswald’s case so remarkable; consider that here is an ex-Marine sniper with Marxist leanings and a desire to make himself famous by killing a world leader, who purchases a high powered rifle through the mail for fifteen bucks, and then somehow gets a job at the one place the President of the United States’ motorcade is going to pass within fifty yards of just a month beforehand. Quite a remarkable coincidence that was to provide Oswald, who already had the means and the motive, with the opportunity to commit one of the most heinous crimes in history, and one that remains controversial to this day. What if he hadn’t gotten the job at the Schoolbook Depository Building on October 16, 1963? Impossible to say for certain, but it’s a near certainty he would not have had nearly the fine perch the City of Dallas was to provide him that sunny November afternoon.
2.Poe Coincidence
In the 19th century, the famous horror writer, Egdar Allan Poe, wrote a book called ‘The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym’. It was about four survivors of a shipwreck who were in an open boat for many days before they decided to kill and eat the cabin boy whose name was Richard Parker. Some years later, in 1884, the yawl, Mignonette, foundered, with only four survivors, who were in an open boat for many days. Eventully the three senior members of the crew, killed and ate the cabin boy. The name of the cabin boy was Richard Parker.
1.Historical Coincidence
The lives of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, two of America’s founders. Jefferson crafted the Declaration of Independence, showing drafts of it to Adams, who (with Benjamin Franklin) helped to edit and hone it.The document was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. Surprisingly, both Jefferson and Adams died on the same day, July 4, 1826 – exactly 50 years from the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
