Conspiracy theorists would have us believe that coincidences don't exist. On the surface it sounds silly. Of course they're are a thing; but then something happens that makes you wonder if just maybe...
Life is full of those moments, were the coincidence is a little too coincidental, ya know? Or maybe you don't know.
That's okay, cause we're going to talk about some. Reddit blew up when one user asked:
What are some of the coolest coincidences in history?
Things. Got. Spooky.
Y'all, the amount of stuff that's been determined by blind luck is honestly a little disconcerting.
The Moon
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The Moon is about 400 times smaller than the Sun, but it also just happens to be about 400 times closer. The result is that from Earth, they appear to be the same size.
Bermuda
In Bermuda in the early 70s a kid riding his scooter was hit by a taxi and tragically killed. A year later, his younger brother was riding his scooter and was hit and killed by a taxi.
They were both the same age.
Riding the same scooter.
Hit by the same taxi.
With the same driver.
And passenger.
And on the same street.
Dennis
Both versions of Dennis the Menace were created at the same time with no knowledge between either creator. An American one and the UK one. By all accounts, neither man knew, or had any way of knowing, that there was an equivalent comic being developed an ocean away. Both first appeared on March 12, 1951.
- DJ1066
Unsinkable
The "Unsinkable Woman"
Violet Jessop was an ocean liner nurse who is known for surviving the disastrous sinkings of RMS Titanic in 1912, and her sister ship HMHS Britannic in 1916.
In addition, she had been onboard RMS Olympic, the eldest of the three sister ships, when it collided with a British warship, HMS Hawke, in 1911.
Oops
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th Independence Day. Adams' last words were, "Thomas Jefferson survives".
Thomas Jefferson had died 5 hours earlier.
Dynasty
Classical era China changing dynasties because of a bad day of rain and some drunk dudes.
Liu Bang is a 3rd century Chief of Security who is supposed to be escorting prisoners. He drinks too much and falls asleep black out drunk. Some prisoners escape. When he wakes up he frees the others and runs away, because letting prisoners escape is punishable by the death penalty.
Some of his friends in the army get stuck due to heavy rain and are at risk of facing the death penalty for being late to an official event. They start a revolt, amass around 10000 villagers but it fails.
Liu Bang is inspired by this and wants to make his come back (and is still fearing for his head) so he creates a revolt in his county. Revolt gains in traction, he takes the capital.
That's the end of the Qin dynasty and Liu Bang becomes the emperor Gao Zu, first of the Han dynasty.
All of that because someone drank on the job and his friends were caught by rain.
Richard Parker
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Edgar Allan Poe predicted the future. His only novel---- The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket ---- is about 4 shipwrecked men who run out of food and eat the cabin boy, Richard Parker.
46 years after it published, a yacht sank in real life and 3 of the 4 survivors also decided to eat the cabin boy... name Richard Parker.
- dorvann
This was the inspiration for Life of Pi:
The name Richard Parker for the tiger was inspired by a character in Edgar Allan Poe's nautical adventure novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838). Richard Parker is a mutineer who is stranded and eventually cannibalized on the hull of an overturned ship, and there is a dog aboard who is named Tiger.
Martel (the author) also had another occurrence in mind in the famous legal case R v Dudley and Stephens (1884), where a shipwreck again results in the cannibalism of a cabin boy named Richard Parker, this time in a lifeboat.
A third Richard Parker drowned in the sinking of the Francis Spaight in 1846, described by author Jack London, and later the cabin boy was cannibalized.
"So many victimized Richard Parkers had to mean something" Martel suggested.
The Driveway
This one time in high school a friend and I had gotten stoned and were heading home around 10pm. After a little while a car is behind us, Friend got all paranoid that the car was a cop and wanted to "lose" him. So he took a turn, car behind us follows. Takes another. Car follows. And another. Now we are just wondering if the cop is messing with us or waiting until my friend makes a driving error that justifies a stop.
We're like f*** it, let's pull into a neighborhood and park in a driveway so it looks like it's our house. So we pull into a random neighborhood. The car follows. We pull into a random house's driveway park and turn off the car. Our stalker parks at the end of the driveway and just idles there
We sat in the driveway for like 5 min in a what the f*** do we do now state.We conclude it's probably not a cop now that we can see the car, and that we just have to walk down and talk to him and see why he was following us for so long.
....we were at his house
Plum Pudding
I love the plum pudding story:
"The French writer Émile Deschamps claims in his memoirs that, in 1805, he was treated to some plum pudding by a stranger named Monsieur de Fontgibu. Ten years later, the writer encountered plum pudding on the menu of a Paris restaurant and wanted to order some, but the waiter told him that the last dish had already been served to another customer, who turned out to be de Fontgibu. Many years later, in 1832, Deschamps was at a dinner and once again ordered plum pudding. He recalled the earlier incident and told his friends that only de Fontgibu was missing to make the setting complete – and in the same instant, the now-senile de Fontgibu entered the room, having got the wrong address."
- tinkrman
Mark Goes Out
Mark Twain was born shortly after an appearance of Halley's Comet, and he predicted that he would "go out with it" as well; he died the day after the comet made its closest approach to the Earth. The comet only appears every 75-76 years.
Angel's Glow
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Not sure if this really counts as a coincidence, but it's a super cool story and really lucky for the soldiers that it involved.
So after the Battle of Shiloh in 1862 (during the civil war), multiple wounded soldiers were left on the cold, muddy ground in Tennessee to await help. During the two nights they spent laying there some of the men noticed a faint blue glow coming from their cuts, when help finally arrived they found that the men who had glowing cuts were more likely to survive. The glow was named 'The Angel's Glow' but no more research was done into it. Until in 2017 when a history buff decided to go to where the Battle of Shiloh was held and take a few soil samples.
His mom just so happened to be a microbiologist who helped him examine the soil. They found these nematodes that are known for burying into insect larva and vomiting chemicals that kill the host organism, and they discovered that a bioluminescent bacterium that glows faint blue lives inside those nematodes.
So basically the nematodes were burying into organisms that were in the soldiers wounds and vomiting these chemicals that killed a lot of the more deadly bacteria that had gotten into the soldiers wounds. Some of that bacteria was bioluminescent, creating the glow those soldiers saw!
Sorry this was so long, hope you found it as interesting as I did :)
Kevin Lewis
Two tall, bald, African American men named Kevin Lewis were given $1,000,000 each by the Horseshoe Casino after Kevin Lewis won a draw, but they accidentally gave the prize to Kevin Lewis instead, so both got to keep the money.
Mexico 2020
This year, Cinco de Mayo fell on taco Tuesday in the middle of a pandemic named after a Mexican beer.
- s7even
March 1908
Less than one month ago, the oldest living woman and the oldest living man in Britain shared a birthday - 29 March 1908. The second oldest living woman in Britain was born on 30 March 1908.
Whatever was in the water in March 1908, it provided 5 of our supercentenarians.
Hilda May Clulow (née Heath) 15 March 1908-24 December 2019 111 years, 284 days
Joan Eileen Hocquard 29 March 1908 Living 112 years, 66 days
Robert Weighton 29 March 1908-28 May 2020 112 years, 60 days
Alfred Smith 29 March 1908-3 August 2019 111 years, 127 days
Violet Davies-Evans 30 March 1908-5 May 2020 112 years, 36 days
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