These creepy historical coincidences will make your head spin. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for circumstances so eerie and so unlikely that they send a slight chill up your spine.
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00:00 And he saw Liège, 6.6 kilometers.
00:04 That was frightening.
00:06 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for circumstances so eerie
00:11 and so unlikely that they send a slight chill up your spine.
00:15 Look what we made.
00:20 Number 20.
00:21 Flight 666 flew into hell on Friday the 13th.
00:29 Flights around the world are represented by three-letter codes.
00:32 The code for Helsinki-Vanta Airport, the primary airport of Finland's capital, is "Hell".
00:37 Finavia, the airport's owner, has had fun with the initials.
00:41 In October of 2017, they had a PR campaign, #LifeInHell.
00:46 It was a mixed media campaign with TV and online content.
00:50 They even had a well-known Chinese actor spend a month living at the airport.
00:57 Three days after the launch of the campaign, on Friday the 13th, Finnair's regular flight
01:02 666 from Copenhagen flew straight to hell.
01:07 There was no bad luck to be found, but what a way to tempt fate.
01:11 Number 19.
01:12 November 9th, the German Day of Fate.
01:15 Mark Twain once said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes."
01:19 Germans know that Twain was right.
01:22 Dating back to 1848, many history-shaping events of German history all occurred on the
01:27 same day.
01:28 November 9th is so significant in Germany, they have a name for it.
01:32 Schicksalstag, or "The Day of Fate".
01:35 On November 9th, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated the throne, ending the 500-year reign of Haus
01:42 Hohenzollern.
01:43 Just a few years later, Hitler's failed "Bierhohlputsch" ended on November 9th, 1923, launching his
01:49 political career.
01:51 In 1938, on November 9th, the SS launched Kristallnacht, a violent pogrom against the
01:57 nation's Jewry.
01:58 It's not all dark history, however.
02:00 November 9th, 1989, saw the fall of the Berlin Wall.
02:13 Number 18.
02:14 The graves of the first and last World War I casualties face each other.
02:19 World War I was the bloodiest war in the history of England.
02:22 The Battle of Somme, for instance, claimed more British lives than every single post-World
02:26 War II British battle combined.
02:28 The nation lost six percent of its total male population to the war.
02:32 Many of those fallen soldiers rest in St. Symphorien Military Cemetery.
02:36 However, there is an odd and unplanned coincidence with their graves.
02:40 The first British casualty of the war was a young man named John Parr.
02:43 The last was 30-year-old George Edwin Ellison.
02:46 Parr and Ellison both lie at St. Symphorien, seven yards apart, and facing one another.
02:52 Private John Parr, the first British soldier killed, is buried here.
02:56 So is George Ellison, the last shot an hour before the ceasefire took effect.
03:01 Their graves act as somber bookends to a tragic chapter in their nation's history.
03:06 Number 17.
03:07 The Civil War began and ended on the same man's property.
03:11 The first shots of the American Civil War rang out at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
03:15 It wasn't a battle, per se.
03:17 There were only 85 defenders, and the few casualties came from an accident during the
03:21 surrender.
03:22 The first pitched battle occurred later, with the First Battle of Bull Run in Manassas,
03:26 Virginia.
03:27 It was named for a stream that ran through the farmland of a grocer named Wilmer McClain.
03:31 The battle was fierce and bloody, revealing to the country just how horrific a protracted
03:35 war on American soil would become.
03:38 After the battle, McClain fled his home to find safety.
03:41 He moved to Appomattox, Virginia.
03:44 Four years later, Robert E. Lee incidentally surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in the parlor
03:49 of McClain's Appomattox home.
03:51 Number 16.
03:52 Major Somerford defied the odds in the worst way imaginable.
03:56 Walter Somerford, a British major during World War I, was sent home from the front in Belgium
04:02 in 1918.
04:03 He wasn't hit by a bullet or a mortar shell; Somerford was struck by lightning.
04:08 He was temporarily paralyzed from the waist down and sent back home.
04:12 Six years later, while fishing in a local river, Somerford was struck by lightning for
04:16 a second time.
04:17 Again, Somerford had to rehabilitate from temporary paralysis.
04:21 Fast forward another six years, and the major's luck ran out.
04:24 He was hit by lightning a third time during a stroll in the park.
04:28 He struggled for two years in a hospital bed before succumbing.
04:31 Four years after that, his tombstone was struck by lightning.
04:35 That's four strikes, one every six years.
04:38 Did I ever tell you I've been struck by lightning seven times?
04:44 Once when I was repairing a leak on the roof.
04:48 Number 15.
04:49 The comets hit by a meteor.
04:52 Meteor shower, take evasive action.
04:53 What's evasive action?
04:54 It's when you get out of the way of something.
04:57 What exactly am I supposed to get out of the way of exactly?
05:00 I have no idea.
05:01 All it says is take evasive ac...
05:03 There is a reason why meteors are incredibly valuable.
05:06 Many meteoroids break up in the atmosphere after hurtling through space for millions
05:10 or billions of years.
05:12 According to National Geographic, the chances of getting hit by a meteor are approximately
05:16 one in 1.6 million.
05:18 In 2011, one meteoroid fell to Earth and landed on a house in France.
05:23 Fortunately, nobody was hurt.
05:31 This sort of event was newsworthy thanks to its unlikelihood alone.
05:34 However, there is an odd wrinkle to this particular story.
05:37 The home was owned by the Comet family.
05:41 Number 14.
05:42 Anthony Hopkins and The Girl from Petrovka.
05:44 I'm very fortunate, very lucky.
05:46 I sometimes pinch myself and think, "How did it happen?"
05:49 But I think, "Well, you know, that's the way it is.
05:51 It's an opportunity, luck, and goodness knows what it is.
05:54 Maybe a little bit of talent."
05:55 In the early 1970s, Anthony Hopkins' career was stalling.
05:59 He hoped to jumpstart it with an audition for The Girl from Petrovka, an adaptation
06:03 of an American novel.
06:05 Hopkins was desperate for a break and wanted to be as prepared as possible.
06:09 He frantically searched for the novel, but learned it wasn't yet available in the UK.
06:13 Despondent, he went to the subway and sat on a bench to wait for the train.
06:17 He noticed a bound manuscript on the bench next to him.
06:26 One for the exact book he was searching for.
06:29 He got the part and a year later met the author on set in Vienna.
06:33 He then learned that the author had lost that same copy in a stolen car.
06:44 Horror movies like The Exorcist are famous for having productions plagued with creepy
07:01 tragedies.
07:02 But neither such movies appear to be as cursed as 1976's The Omen.
07:07 Both before and after the film, the cast and crew began to suffer strange accidents.
07:11 Star Gregory Peck's son took his own life after Peck took the role.
07:20 Special effects guru John Richardson oversaw the film's death scenes.
07:24 On his next gig, he and his girlfriend were in a car crash where she died in a manner
07:28 similar to one death in The Omen.
07:31 Both screenwriter David Seltzer and executive producer Mace Neufeld were on airplanes struck
07:35 by lightning.
07:36 It's hard to discount the possibility that the film was in fact cursed.
07:49 Stephen Hawking's Birthday and Death Day
07:57 Stephen Hawking was one of the most famous physicists and cosmologists of the 20th and
08:01 21st centuries.
08:03 He built on the work of astronomers and mathematicians, going all the way back to Galileo.
08:08 He deepened our understanding of the Big Bang, black holes, and time.
08:12 Coincidentally, Hawking was somewhat famously born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo's
08:17 death.
08:18 Adding to the creepy and bizarre symmetry, Hawking died on the birthday of Albert Einstein.
08:23 It was as if the universe was determined to inextricably link three men responsible for
08:28 our understanding of the cosmos.
08:40 John Wilkes Booth's Brother Saved Abraham Lincoln's Son
08:52 Robert Todd Lincoln, the only of the president's children to outlive his parents, himself had
08:57 a long and storied career.
08:59 Lincoln was at one time the Secretary of War, as well as the U.S. Ambassador to the U.K.
09:04 That may never have happened if it weren't for the intervention of a good Samaritan.
09:15 Lincoln was in New Jersey waiting for a train in the middle of a crowd.
09:19 He slipped and fell onto the platform.
09:21 Thankfully, an onlooker managed to pull Lincoln back onto the platform in time to avoid the
09:25 oncoming train.
09:26 That man was Edwin Booth, brother to the man who would ultimately kill Lincoln's father,
09:31 John Wilkes Booth.
09:33 Coincidentally, Lincoln was also present at the assassinations of Presidents Garfield
09:37 and McKinley.
09:45 10.
09:55 Life Magazine helped define popular American culture in the 20th century.
09:59 It was ubiquitous on shelves of every magazine stand, waiting room, and grocery checkout
10:03 in the country.
10:04 The first issue of the magazine as we currently know it was published on November 23rd, 1936.
10:10 The first interior photo in the magazine's history was a picture of a baby being cradled
10:14 by his doctor after being delivered.
10:16 The caption read, "Life Begins."
10:19 That baby was George Story, who himself ultimately grew up to become a journalist.
10:24 Decades later, on April 4th, 2000, Life Magazine announced that it would stop publication.
10:31 Story died of heart failure a few days later.
10:36 9.
10:42 A Dutch Cyclist and Plane Crash Dodger Martin de Jong is a former professional cyclist
10:47 from Holland.
10:48 His career peaked in 2014, with a first-place win in Stage Four of the Tour of Thailand.
10:54 What makes de Jong's life remarkable is not his career; instead, he's known for his shockingly
10:58 good luck.
10:59 The same year that de Jong won the aforementioned race, two separate Malaysia Airlines flights
11:04 crashed.
11:05 One, Flight 370, went missing.
11:07 The other, Flight 17, was shot down over Ukraine by Russia.
11:10 De Jong was allegedly planning to be on both flights.
11:13 In the case of Flight 370, he decided to take a flight earlier in the day.
11:18 With Flight 17, he ultimately chose a cheaper flight home.
11:22 8.
11:23 Bruce and Brandon Lee in Game of Death and The Crow
11:32 Despite Bruce Lee's incredible fitness, he died suddenly at the age of 32 due to an allergic
11:37 reaction to painkillers.
11:39 Lee was in the middle of a movie production, filming Game of Death.
11:42 The film was rewritten and partially re-shot with a double in order to finish.
11:47 In one scene, a prop master on a film set explains to a group of extras how to use a
11:52 prop gun.
12:01 One of them replaces a blank with a real bullet to try and kill Lee's character.
12:05 The scenes are eerily reminiscent of the death of Lee's son, Brandon, decades later.
12:10 While shooting The Crow, Brandon Lee died when a prop gun was misloaded.
12:15 That film, too, was re-cut and partially re-shot in order to finish.
12:23 7.
12:27 Hitler and Napoleon In all of history, only Napoleon Bonaparte
12:39 and Adolf Hitler have come close to conquering all of Europe.
12:42 What is creepy is that their lives, rises to power, and falls mirror each other incredibly
12:48 well.
12:49 Divided by 120 to 130 years, their journeys were strikingly similar.
13:00 Both were born in a country different from the one that would come to rule.
13:03 Both seized power in a former superpower weakened by defeat in a previous war.
13:08 They both utilized shockingly effective new military tactics to quickly conquer their
13:12 neighbors, leaving England isolated and alone.
13:15 Each leader was weakened by resistance movements in the territories they conquered, and ultimately
13:20 they were each undone by a poorly conceived invasion of Russia, each defeated by the bitter
13:25 cold.
13:28 6.
13:32 James Dean's death and his cursed Porsche Like Marlon Brando, James Dean was a method
13:37 actor of the new school.
13:46 Between his good looks and his intense performances, the sky was the limit for his career.
13:50 Unfortunately, he died in 1955 while driving his brand new Porsche 550 Spyder.
13:56 There were many odd and spine-tingling coincidences surrounding the crash.
14:00 Dean was with fellow actor Alec Guinness when the car was delivered.
14:04 Guinness took one look at the machine and allegedly said, "Please never get in it.
14:09 It is now 10 o'clock, Friday the 23rd of September, 1955.
14:13 If you get in that car, you will be found dead in it by this time next week."
14:26 Pieces of the car would later get resold, and caused multiple further accidents and
14:30 two fatalities.
14:32 5.
14:33 Author Morgan Robertson predicted the Titanic In 1898, author Morgan Robertson wrote a novella
14:40 called "The Wreck of the Titan" or "Futility".
14:43 His fictional Titan is a British passenger liner, marketed as the largest and most unsinkable
14:48 ship in the world.
14:49 On its maiden voyage to America in the North Atlantic on a cold April night, the Titan
14:54 strikes an iceberg on the starboard side.
14:57 Possibly due to the hype around the Titan's unsinkability, the vessel doesn't have enough
15:01 lifeboats.
15:09 Most of the passengers and crew do not survive.
15:11 Fourteen years later, an actual ocean liner suffered a virtually identical fate.
15:17 So many of the details, down to the ship's name, "Titanic", mirrored Robertson's
15:22 book to a T.
15:23 4.
15:31 JFK may have predicted his own assassination On November 22, 1963, all of the United States
15:43 came to a standstill with the news that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.
15:48 Nine years later, two of his closest friends and aides wrote a memoir about JFK, titled
15:52 "Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye".
15:54 In that book, authors David Powers and Kenneth O'Donnell describe the events of that November
15:59 morning.
16:08 Jackie Kennedy had seen an anti-JFK ad in a local newspaper that was designed to resemble
16:13 a funeral notice.
16:15 It shook her terribly.
16:16 The president allegedly responded, "We're heading into nut country today, but Jackie,
16:22 if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry
16:27 about it?"
16:28 All the demands I made to honor him, it wasn't for Jack or his legacy.
16:37 It was for me.
16:39 3.
16:40 The Hoover Dam Tragedies The Hoover Dam was one of the greatest American
16:43 engineering marvels of the 20th century.
16:46 At the time, it was the largest hydroelectric plant on Earth.
16:49 Even today, it provides electricity for over one million Americans in three states.
16:54 Construction took five years, between 1931 and 1936, but plans for the dam began in the
17:00 early 1920s.
17:02 It was a massive undertaking, and one that ultimately cost the lives of 112 men.
17:07 The second death associated with the dam occurred on December 20th, 1922, when surveyor John
17:13 Gregory Tierney drowned in the Colorado River.
17:16 The final death occurred exactly 13 years later, on December 20th, 1935.
17:22 The man who died that day was Tierney's son, Patrick.
17:27 2.
17:28 Predicting Pearl Harbor Mere weeks leading up to the attack on Pearl
17:35 Harbor, a peculiar set of advertisements for a board game ran in The New Yorker that sparked
17:41 a short-lived conspiracy theory.
17:43 The ad was for a game called "The Deadly Double", and in hindsight, was filled with what seemed
17:48 to be warnings for the aerial strike.
17:51 The word "warning" was written on the promotion itself, and featured an illustration of people
17:55 playing the dice game in an air raid bunker.
17:58 Arguably the strangest synchronicity was the numbers on two of those dice being 12 and
18:03 7, corresponding to the date of the attack.
18:06 The theory was investigated, but it was revealed that these ads truly were nothing more than
18:11 coincidences.
18:34 1.
19:00 The Bombing of Nagasaki Yamaguchi saw the plane fly by and drop
19:10 the bomb.
19:11 He was lucky.
19:12 While he suffered severe burns, he survived in a shelter with colleagues.
19:16 The next day, he returned to his home city of Nagasaki.
19:19 Three days after surviving a nuclear bomb, Yamaguchi was at work describing the experience
19:25 to his boss when the second bomb fell.
19:27 He was again far enough away from the blast to survive, suffering radiation poisoning
19:32 with a week-long fever.
19:33 He died at the age of 93 in 2010.
19:47 Did a twist of fate leave a creepy coincidence off our list?
19:51 Let us know in the comments below!
19:58 Thanks for watching!
20:06 -END-