Top 20 MORE Creepiest Coincidences in History
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-