Life is full of coincidence, those seemingly random acts that connect things in surprising ways. You’ve probably had some experience with coincidences – for example, you might have been thinking of someone you hadn’t spoken with in a while, only to have them suddenly call, e-mail or show up for a visit. But there are also coincidences so incredible, they sound like they must have come from the pages of a novel instead of real life.
Perhaps the most famous incredible coincidences in history are the similarities between Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, both of whom were assassinated in office. Some call this set of statistics a “cosmic connection”, but whether there’s anything cosmic about it, the two men had many coincidences between them. For example, major events in their lives occurred 100 years apart. Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846, Kennedy in 1946; Lincoln became President in 1860, Kennedy in 1960. Their assassins were born 100 years apart, in 1839 and 1939. This also applies to their Presidential successors (coincidentally both named Johnson), who were born in 1808 and 1908. Both men were shot on a Friday, and both in the head. Lincoln’s secretary was named Kennedy, and Kennedy’s secretary was named Lincoln.
Several crazy but true coincidences occurred with a set of identical twins who were separated at birth. Both boys were adopted by different families, and by chance, both families named them James, and came to call them Jim. Though they didn’t know each other growing up, each Jim was talented at carpentry and mechanical drawing, and both went through law enforcement training. They both had sons – James Alan and James Allan – and both named their dog Toy. Each twin married women named Linda, then divorced and remarried women named Betty. Now that’s a lot of coincidence!
Contemporary famous figures also experience their share of coincidence, like the actor Anthony Hopkins. In 1973, after agreeing to appear in a movie called “The Girl from Petrovka” based on a novel by George Feifer, Hopkins couldn’t find a copy of the book to study from in any bookstore. However, he soon found one – strangely, sitting on a bench in a train station. The book Hopkins discovered was George Feifer’s personal copy, with the author’s notes, which had been stolen.
Happenstance makes life stranger than fiction, especially when fiction comes true. Such was the case with a story by Edgar Allan Poe. One of his fictional works concerned a shipwrecked open boat, with three survivors who killed and ate the fourth to keep from starving to death. The fourth survivor in the story was a cabin boy by the name of Richard Parker. Fifty years after Poe penned the tale, there was an actual shipwreck – and three survivors in an open boat killed and ate a cabin boy named Richard Parker to keep from starving.
The world is full of amazing coincidences, chance happenings, and pure serendipity. These random acts can be funny, frightening or downright strange, but they are always interesting – and they keep us on our toes!
Stranger Than Fiction: Incredible Coincidences
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