Top 50 Creepiest REAL-LIFE Coincidences
These historical coincidences are stranger than fiction. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for 50 creepy coincidences in history.
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00:00President Kennedy and Governor John Connally have been cut down by assassins' bullets in downtown Dallas.
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for 50 incredible moments when life was stranger than fiction.
00:13I was telling my company supervisor in Nagasaki that one bomb had destroyed all of Hiroshima.
00:19He told me I was crazy.
00:21Just as he said that...
00:24Number 50. The story of Xu Weifeng.
00:29Despite a seemingly constant influx of bad news filtering into our media diet, it's important to remember the world is filled with unsung heroes.
00:37One such hero is Xu Weifeng, a resident of Jiangsu province in China.
00:41One day in 2018, Mr. Weifeng happened upon an 8-year-old boy drowning in a river.
00:47Despite being 80 at the time and having some pre-existing injuries from a fall, Mr. Weifeng leapt into action.
00:54He saved the boy, much to his family's relief.
00:57The story would have ended there, but for a truly bizarre bit of random chance,
01:01Mr. Weifeng had saved the boy's father from a nearly identical situation 30 years before.
01:08Number 49. Till death do us part.
01:11Margaret and John Naylor were an Irish couple living in Dublin at the start of the 20th century.
01:16When World War I broke out, John left his family to join the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
01:21John fought bravely on the battlefields and in the trenches of France.
01:25Unfortunately, John died in a gas attack in Huluk on April 29th, 1916.
01:31Tragically, Margaret would never hear the news.
01:34On that same day, back home in Dublin, civil unrest had boiled over in the Easter week rising.
01:40In 1916, with the First World War raging,
01:43a ragtag group of rebels and revolutionaries saw an opportunity to strike against the British Empire.
01:49Irish Republicans rebelling against British rule clashed with British soldiers.
01:53Margaret was shot at the crossfire on Ringsend Drawbridge, lying wounded for hours before anyone helped her.
01:59After shelling from a Royal Navy battleship, Dublin was in flames.
02:03By Saturday, the rising had been crushed.
02:06She died in a hospital several days later, orphaning their three children.
02:19Sometimes an event takes place that seems due to divine intervention.
02:23One such near-catastrophe took place in Beatrice, Nebraska on March 1st, 1950.
02:29It was a chilly night, so the Reverend of Westside Baptist Church lit the furnace to warm up choir practice.
02:36He went home for dinner.
02:37He was late for the 7.15 practice because his daughter's dress needed to be clean.
02:42Every member of the choir had similarly mundane or random reasons to show up late that night.
02:48No one was ever really late.
02:49There might have been very, very few circumstances, but most often everyone was there all the time.
02:55I really can't think of a time that anyone came late.
02:58From car trouble to problems with math homework to plain old laziness, all 15 church members were late.
03:05As it turned out, that tardiness saved their lives.
03:08At the time choir practice was supposed to begin, the furnace exploded, collapsing the building.
03:14Minutes after the explosion, the choir members began to arrive, each one thinking that the others had perished.
03:29The Philippines saw a truly bizarre series of violent incidents between 2000 and 2012.
03:35Though they were seemingly unconnected, there was one through line.
03:39They were all responses to karaoke performances of Frank Sinatra's song, My Way.
03:49These incidents often occurred in bars and karaoke clubs where patrons would sing the song, provoking assaults and murders.
03:57The reasons behind the violent reactions are varied.
04:00Some were disputes over off-key renditions.
04:03One theory is that the song's lyrics lend themselves to perceived arrogance by the singers.
04:15Whatever the reason, many karaoke bars in the Philippines removed My Way from their song lists.
04:21By the end of the phenomena, at least six people had been killed.
04:28According to studies, nine out of every ten people are right-handed.
04:32Archaeological evidence shows that it's been that way for as long as 500,000 years.
04:37One would think, then, that subgroups of people would reflect a similar distribution.
04:42When it comes to American presidents, though, that assumption would be incorrect.
04:46Of the 14 U.S. presidents since the end of the Second World War, six of them, or 42%, have been left-handed.
04:54Biologists and psychologists have actually tackled this esoteric topic in academic articles.
04:59Theories abound.
05:01Some think it has to do with their more dominant right-brain hemispheres.
05:05Others think that Southpaws developed levels of creativity and divergent thinking ideal for politicians.
05:11A parade of talented folks lead credence to the theory Leonardo da Vinci, for example, was a lefty.
05:16So was Mozart, Picasso, Einstein, Madame Curie, Mark Twain, Babe Ruth, and Jimi Hendrix.
05:23Whatever the reason, the number of lefty presidents seems too high to be a mere coincidence.
05:32No matter where you are or what you're doing, there's no escaping Friday the 13th.
05:40Thomas W. Lawson was a stockbroker in London who wrote a novel in 1907, Friday the 13th.
05:46It was the tale of another British stockbroker who attempted to crash the market on a Friday the 13th.
05:52The book was a smash hit, forever linking that day with bad luck in the stock market.
05:57Two years later, a schooner named the Thomas W. Lawson was making her first transatlantic trip.
06:04It was named after a different Lawson, but the connection is incredibly eerie.
06:08On the night of December 13th, 1907, a Friday, the schooner sailed into a terrible storm.
06:15She sank in the wee hours of the morning, the 17 souls aboard lost at sea.
06:20The Lawson was the largest sailing ship the world had ever seen.
06:24She was en route from Philadelphia to London with a cargo of oil when she hit the western rocks of Scilly in December 1907.
06:32Number 44. Battle of the Carmanias
06:35During World War I, some private shipping companies saw their vessels commandeered by their respective governments.
06:42Many such ships were transatlantic steamers and merchant vessels retrofitted into battleships.
06:48Germany requisitioned the vessel Cap Trafalgar, painting her to look like the British merchant ship, the RMS Carmania.
06:55The plan was to use her as a Judas goat, luring Allied vessels into their demise.
07:01Unfortunately, on September 14th, 1914, the Cap Trafalgar happened to run into the actual RMS Carmania, ruining the ruse.
07:12It was a ferocious battle, the first ever to take place between ocean liners.
07:16The real Carmania won out, sinking her doppelganger.
07:20Number 43. The Double Survivor
07:23September 11th, 2001 was the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
07:28We saw a lot of things that day that no one should see.
07:32There are many stories from survivors about how fickle twists of fate saved their lives.
07:37One such person was a man named Matthew, who came face to face with fate not once, but twice in his life.
07:44Matthew was passing the Twin Towers at the time, on his way to a business meeting.
07:49Fourteen years later, Matthew was in Paris, enjoying a show at the Bataclan Theater.
07:55Terrorists entered the club, shooting dozens upon dozens of the concertgoers.
07:59Matthew was one of those shot, though he survived by slowly crawling to safety.
08:04It's hard to gauge the quality of Matthew's luck, having barely survived two separate terrorist attacks.
08:11This is an attack not just on Paris, it's an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.
08:2342. Megalith Construction
08:26Could it be that ancient structures throughout the world were designed to function together as part of a massive energy grid?
08:34The world is littered with megaliths, stone constructs created by our ancient ancestors.
08:40Those who built them would have no connection to one another.
08:43Yet, some of their constructs, separated by both distance and time, appear to form straight lines.
08:50Starting in the 1920s, amateur historians and archaeologists, as well as occultists, have posited connections between these ancient sites and natural landmarks.
09:00These amateur sleuths began to call these pathways ley lines.
09:04Some believe that ley lines mark paths of electromagnetic power that encircle the Earth.
09:09Running around the globe, everywhere, are energies that pulsate through the Earth.
09:14This particular place is on, we call it, a power spot, where energies seem to accumulate, come into like a hub, and then flow off into other places.
09:26While there is no evidence to prove the existence of ley lines, it's hard to deny the coincidence that many, though certainly not all, megaliths seem to be built along grid-like lines.
09:3741. Capitol Hill Saved by a Tornado
09:41Can you imagine how you'd feel if the White House went up in flames?
09:45That might seem like something that could only happen in a movie, but in 1814, it really did.
09:51Though the War of 1812 ostensibly ended in a draw, it also saw the White House get burned by British soldiers.
09:58One could argue, though, that the seat of the nascent American Republic, Capitol Hill, was saved by an act of providence.
10:06On August 25, 1814, as the Redcoats marched on Washington, the heat was surging to 100 degrees.
10:14As the city burned, a cold front clashed with the flames and summer heat.
10:19Thunder clashed, rain poured down, and a tornado formed in the middle of the city.
10:24The funnel made a beeline towards the British, destroying cannons and battle lines alike.
10:30The British abandoned the city, damaging but unable to burn down Capitol Hill.
10:35It was a huge embarrassment to the government and to President Madison. The Secretary of War had to resign.
10:4040. Flight 666 Flew into Hell on Friday the 13th
10:49Airports around the world are represented by three-letter codes.
10:52The code for Helsinki-Vanta Airport, the primary airport of Finland's capital, is HELL.
10:58Finavia, the airport's owner, has had fun with the initials.
11:02In October of 2017, they had a PR campaign, hashtag Life in Hell.
11:07It was a mixed media campaign with TV and online content.
11:11They even had a well-known Chinese actor spend a month living at the airport.
11:18Three days after the launch of the campaign, on Friday the 13th, Finnair's regular flight 666 from Copenhagen flew straight to Hell.
11:28There was no bad luck to be found, but what a way to tempt fate.
11:37Mark Twain once said, history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
11:41Germans know that Twain was right.
11:43Dating back to 1848, many history-shaping events of German history all occurred on the same day.
11:49November 9th is so significant in Germany, they have a name for it, Schicksalstag, or the Day of Fate.
11:56On November 9th, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated the throne, ending the 500-year reign of Haus Hohenzollern.
12:04Just a few years later, Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch ended on November 9th, 1923, launching his political career.
12:12In 1938, on November 9th, the SS launched Kristallnacht, a violent pogrom against the nation's Jewry.
12:19It's not all dark history, however.
12:21November 9th, 1989, saw the fall of the Berlin Wall.
12:25It has been an astonishing day.
12:27Hour after hour all through today, thousands and thousands of West Germans have come to the Wall to see for themselves.
12:40World War I was the bloodiest war in the history of England.
12:43The Battle of Somme, for instance, claimed more British lives than every single post-World War II British battle combined.
12:49The nation lost 6% of its total male population to the war.
12:53Many of those fallen soldiers rest in St. Symphorien Military Cemetery.
12:57However, there is an odd and unplanned coincidence with their graves.
13:01The first British casualty of the war was a young man named John Parr.
13:05The last was 30-year-old George Edwin Ellison.
13:08Parr and Ellison both lie at St. Symphorien, seven yards apart, and facing one another.
13:13Private John Parr, the first British soldier killed, is buried here.
13:17So is George Ellison, the last, shot an hour before the ceasefire took effect.
13:22Their graves act as somber bookends to a tragic chapter in their nation's history.
13:33The first shots of the American Civil War rang out at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
13:37It wasn't a battle, per se.
13:39There were only 85 defenders, and the few casualties came from an accident during the surrender.
13:44The first pitched battle occurred later, with the First Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Virginia.
13:49It was named for a stream that ran through the farmland of a grocer named Wilmer McLean.
13:54The battle was fierce and bloody, revealing to the country just how horrific a protracted war on American soil would become.
14:00After the battle, McLean fled his home to find safety.
14:03He moved to Appomattox, Virginia.
14:06Four years later, Robert E. Lee incidentally surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in the parlor of McLean's Appomattox home.
14:19Walter Somerford, a British major during World War I, was sent home from the front in Belgium in 1918.
14:26He wasn't hit by a bullet or a mortar shell. Somerford was struck by lightning.
14:30He was temporarily paralyzed from the waist down and sent back home.
14:34Six years later, while fishing in a local river, Somerford was struck by lightning for a second time.
14:39Again, Somerford had to rehabilitate from temporary paralysis.
14:43Fast forward another six years, and the major's luck ran out.
14:47He was hit by lightning a third time during a stroll in the park.
14:50He struggled for two years in a hospital bed before succumbing.
14:54Four years after that, his tombstone was struck by lightning.
14:57That's four strikes, one every six years.
15:11Number 35. The Comets Hit by a Meteor
15:18It's when you get out of the way of something.
15:26There is a reason why meteors are incredibly valuable.
15:29Many meteoroids break up in the atmosphere after hurtling through space for millions or billions of years.
15:35According to National Geographic, the chances of getting hit by a meteor are approximately one in 1.6 million.
15:41In 2011, one meteoroid fell to Earth and landed on a house in France.
15:46Fortunately, nobody was hurt.
15:54This sort of event was newsworthy thanks to its unlikelihood alone.
15:57However, there is an odd wrinkle to this particular story.
16:00The home was owned by the Comet family.
16:04Number 34. Anthony Hopkins and the Girl from Petrovka
16:17In the early 1970s, Anthony Hopkins' career was stalling.
16:22He hoped to jumpstart it with an audition for The Girl from Petrovka, an adaptation of an American novel.
16:28Hopkins was desperate for a break and wanted to be as prepared as possible.
16:32He frantically searched for the novel, but learned it wasn't yet available in the UK.
16:36Despondent, he went to the subway and sat on a bench to wait for the train.
16:40He noticed a bound manuscript on the bench next to him.
16:47One for the exact book he was searching for.
16:52He got the part and a year later met the author on set in Vienna.
16:56He then learned that the author had lost that same copy in a stolen car.
17:07Number 33. The Curse of the Omen
17:17Horror movies like The Exorcist are famous for having productions plagued with creepy tragedies.
17:23Few such movies appear to be as cursed as 1976's The Omen.
17:27Both before and after the film, the cast and crew began to suffer strange accidents.
17:32Star Gregory Peck's son took his own life after Peck took the role.
17:37Special effects guru John Richardson oversaw the film's death scenes.
17:41On his next gig, he and his girlfriend were in a car crash,
17:44where she died in a manner similar to one death in The Omen.
17:48Both screenwriter David Seltzer and executive producer Mace Neufeld
17:52were on airplanes struck by lightning.
17:54It's hard to discount the possibility that the film was in fact cursed.
17:58He says, if you guys go ahead and make this movie,
18:01Number 32. Stephen Hawking's Birthday and Death Day
18:11Stephen Hawking was one of the most famous physicists and cosmologists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
18:16He built on the work of astronomers and mathematicians going all the way back to Galileo.
18:21He was also the creator of the first humanoid robot.
18:24He was also the creator of the first humanoid robot.
18:27He built on the work of astronomers and mathematicians going all the way back to Galileo.
18:31He deepened our understanding of the Big Bang, black holes, and time.
18:35Coincidentally, Hawking was somewhat famously born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo's death.
18:41Adding to the creepy and bizarre symmetry, Hawking died on the birthday of Albert Einstein.
18:47It was as if the universe was determined to inextricably link three men
18:51responsible for our understanding of the cosmos.
18:54Does that mean that there is a universe out there where I am smarter than you?
18:59Yes, and also a universe where you're funny.
19:03Number 31. John Wilkes Booth's brother saved Abraham Lincoln's son.
19:09So that moment where the whole future looked like it had finally lifted,
19:15the clouds had separated, comes crashing down.
19:18Robert Todd Lincoln, the only of the president's children to outlive his parents,
19:22himself had a long and storied career.
19:24Lincoln was at one time the Secretary of War, as well as the U.S. Ambassador to the U.K.
19:29That may never have happened if it weren't for the intervention of a good Samaritan.
19:33This is just a clumsy attempt at discouragement.
19:36I've been to army hospitals, I've seen surgeries, I went and visited the malaria barges with Mama.
19:40Lincoln was in New Jersey waiting for a train in the middle of a crowd.
19:44He slipped and fell onto the platform.
19:46Thankfully, an onlooker managed to pull Lincoln back onto the platform in time to avoid the oncoming train.
19:51That man was Edwin Booth, brother to the man who would ultimately kill Lincoln's father, John Wilkes Booth.
19:58Coincidentally, Lincoln was also present to the assassinations of Presidents Garfield and McKinley.
20:03I want to be useful, but now, not afterwards.
20:07I ain't wearing them things, Mr. Slade. They never fit right.
20:10Number 30. The beginning and end of life.
20:14Should we go buy one of those?
20:16Yeah, I was probably gonna...
20:18Probably gonna go back later?
20:19Yeah, yeah.
20:20Life magazine helped define popular American culture in the 20th century.
20:24It was ubiquitous, on shelves of every magazine stand, waiting room, and grocery checkout in the country.
20:30The first issue of the magazine as we currently know it was published on November 23rd, 1936.
20:35The first interior photo in the magazine's history was a picture of a baby being cradled by his doctor after being delivered.
20:42The caption read, Life Begins.
20:45That baby was George Story, who himself ultimately grew up to become a journalist.
20:50Decades later, on April 4th, 2000, Life magazine announced that it would stop publication.
20:56Story died of heart failure a few days later.
20:59When I was growing up, that was, you know, you looked at Life magazine and that was how you saw the world.
21:07Number 29. A Dutch cyclist and a plane crash dodger.
21:11Maarten de Jong is a former professional cyclist from Holland.
21:14His career peaked in 2014, with a first-place win in Stage Four of the Tour of Thailand.
21:19What makes de Jong's life remarkable is not his career. Instead, he's known for his shockingly good luck.
21:25The same year that de Jong won the aforementioned race, two separate Malaysia Airlines flights crashed.
21:30One, Flight 370, went missing. The other, Flight 17, was shot down over Ukraine by Russia.
21:36De Jong was allegedly planning to be on both flights.
21:39In the case of Flight 370, he decided to take a flight earlier in the day.
21:43With Flight 17, he ultimately chose a cheaper flight home.
21:47Number 28. Bruce and Brandon Lee in Game of Death and The Crow.
21:52Listen! I'm sure you'll remember. You killed them on Halloween.
21:58Despite Bruce Lee's incredible fitness, he died suddenly at the age of 32 due to an allergic reaction to painkillers.
22:05Lee was in the middle of a movie production, filming Game of Death.
22:09The film was rewritten and partially re-shot with a double in order to finish.
22:13In one scene, a prop master on a film set explains to a group of extras how to use a prop gun.
22:19Gentlemen, these are blanks. Only aim upward. There's a wad of paper that comes out and can injure someone.
22:27One of them replaces a blank with a real bullet to try and kill Lee's character.
22:32The scenes are eerily reminiscent of the death of Lee's son Brandon decades later.
22:37While shooting The Crow, Brandon Lee died when a prop gun was misloaded.
22:41That film, too, was re-cut and partially re-shot in order to finish.
22:53Number 27. Hitler and Napoleon.
23:02In all of history, only Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler have come close to conquering all of Europe.
23:08What is creepy is that their lives, rises to power, and falls mirror each other incredibly well.
23:14Separated by 120 to 130 years, their journeys were strikingly similar.
23:21Both were born in a country different from the one that would come to rule.
23:25Both seized power in a former superpower weakened by defeat in a previous war.
23:29They both utilized shockingly effective new military tactics to quickly conquer their neighbors,
23:34leaving England isolated and alone.
23:37Each leader was weakened by resistance movements in the territories they conquered,
23:41and ultimately, they were each undone by a poorly-conceived invasion of Austria.
23:46Number 26. Did Shakespeare help write the King James Bible?
23:50By the time King James took the throne of England,
23:53his predecessor Queen Elizabeth had successfully established the Church of England as the national faith.
23:58Members of the Church asked that a new, standardized English translation of the Bible be commissioned.
24:03James, however, did not agree.
24:05The Church of England, however, did not agree.
24:09Members of the Church asked that a new, standardized English translation of the Bible be commissioned.
24:14James jumped on the task, approving a team of 47 scholars to write it.
24:19The task was completed in 1611.
24:22There is, however, an oddity that has led to a novel conspiracy theory.
24:26William Shakespeare was secretly a co-author.
24:29The 46th word of Psalm 46 is shake, while the 46th from the last word in the psalm is spear.
24:36Shakespeare happened to turn 46 in 1611.
24:40Did the playwright secretly put his stamp on the book, but slipped it past the king?
24:45Number 25. Johannes Kepler's erroneous interpretation of Galileo led to a major discovery.
24:52In 1610, the famous astronomer Galileo Galilei became the first to observe rings around the planet Saturn.
24:57Astronomy and astrophysics are disciplines that require patience over generations and centuries.
25:04Every scientist in those fields is limited by the technology of their times.
25:08They work in the hope that future generations will build on their progress.
25:12So it was with Galileo Galilei while observing Saturn's rings.
25:16He sent letters out announcing his discovery with this strange message.
25:21For whatever bizarre reason, he hid his discovery in an indecipherable anagram.
25:26Johannes Kepler was one recipient of those letters.
25:29He thought it read, Salve, umbistineum, geminatum, marteum, proles.
25:36That means, be greeted, double knob, children of Mars.
25:40He thought Galileo discovered two moons around Mars.
25:44While he misinterpreted the message, he was actually correct.
25:48Mars does have two moons, Phobos and Deimos.
25:52Number 24. JFK may have predicted his own assassination.
25:57What did the bullet sound like?
26:02On November 22, 1963, all of the United States came to a standstill
26:07with the news that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.
26:11Nine years later, two of his closest friends and aides wrote a memoir about JFK titled,
26:16Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye.
26:18In that book, authors David Powers and Kenneth O'Donnell described the events of that November morning.
26:23And the crowd is absolutely going wild.
26:26This is a friendly crowd in downtown Dallas.
26:29That's the president and the first lady from that side.
26:31Jackie Kennedy had seen an anti-JFK ad in a local newspaper
26:35that was designed to resemble a funeral notice.
26:38It shook her terribly.
26:40The president allegedly responded, quote,
26:42We're heading into nut country today, but Jackie,
26:45if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle,
26:48nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?
26:51End quote.
26:52All the demands I made to honor him,
26:56it wasn't for Jack or his legacy.
27:01It was for me.
27:02Number 23, the Hoover Dam tragedies.
27:05The Hoover Dam was one of the greatest American engineering marvels of the 20th century.
27:09At the time, it was the largest hydroelectric plant on Earth.
27:12Even today, it provides electricity for over one million Americans in three states.
27:17Construction took five years between 1931 and 1936.
27:21But plans for the dam began in the early 1920s.
27:24It was a massive undertaking and one that ultimately cost the lives of 112 men.
27:30The second death associated with the dam occurred on December 20th, 1922,
27:35when surveyor John Gregory Tierney drowned in the Colorado River.
27:39The final death occurred exactly 13 years later on December 20th, 1935.
27:45The man who died that day was Tierney's son, Patrick.
27:49Number 22, predicting Pearl Harbor.
27:57Mere weeks leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor,
28:00a peculiar set of advertisements for a board game ran in The New Yorker
28:04that sparked a short-lived conspiracy theory.
28:07The ad was for a game called The Deadly Double,
28:10and in hindsight, was filled with what seemed to be warnings for the aerial strike.
28:14The word warning was written on the promotion itself
28:17and featured an illustration of people playing the dice game in an air raid bunker.
28:21Arguably the strangest synchronicity was the numbers on two of those dice being 12 and 7,
28:27corresponding to the date of the attack.
28:29The theory was investigated,
28:31but it was revealed that these ads truly were nothing more than coincidences.
28:41Number 21, one man survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
28:47I told my Japanese supervisor in Nagasaki that one bomb had destroyed all of Hiroshima.
28:52He told me I was crazy.
28:54Just as he said that...
28:57Tutsomu Yamaguchi was a Japanese draftsman for Mitsubishi.
29:01In the summer of 1945, he was on an extended business trip to Hiroshima.
29:06On August 6th, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city.
29:11Yamaguchi saw the plane fly by and drop the bomb.
29:15He was lucky.
29:16While he suffered severe burns, he survived in a shelter with colleagues.
29:20The next day, he returned to his home city of Nagasaki.
29:24Three days after surviving a nuclear bomb,
29:26Yamaguchi was at work describing the experience to his boss when the second bomb fell.
29:31He was again far enough away from the blast to survive.
29:34Suffering radiation poisoning with a wound in his right hand,
29:38Suffering radiation poisoning with a week-long fever,
29:41He died at the age of 93 in 2010.
29:44He was in his office with his supervisor and colleagues.
29:49And at that moment, the Nagasaki bomb blasted.
29:54Number 20, karma kills.
29:57Many relationships end on a sour note,
29:59but they rarely result in the deaths of three people.
30:02Legend has it that in the late 19th century,
30:04Henry Ziegland broke up with his girlfriend,
30:06who killed herself as a result.
30:08Her brother hunted Ziegland down and shot him,
30:11ending his own life immediately after.
30:14Ziegland was not killed by the shot, however.
30:16The bullet barely missed him and came to a rest in a nearby tree.
30:20Years later, Ziegland attempted to blow up the tree,
30:23only to have the blast propel the bullet into his head, killing him.
30:27Number 19, the Erdington murders.
30:30On May 27th, 1817,
30:33the body of a 20-year-old woman named Mary Ashford
30:35was found with signs of trauma
30:37in a suburb of Erdington in Birmingham, England.
30:40The man she'd been out with the previous evening,
30:42Abraham Thornton, was deemed the prime suspect.
30:45Due to a lack of evidence and a strong alibi,
30:47he was ultimately found not guilty,
30:49leaving the crime unsolved.
30:51Flash forward 157 years to 1974,
30:55and Erdington was struck by a nearly identical crime.
30:58Another 20-year-old woman was found dead after having gone missing,
31:01like Mary Ashford, on the Christian holiday Wit Monday.
31:04The last person to see her?
31:06A man with the same last name, Michael Ian Thornton.
31:09He too was found not guilty.
31:12Number 18, the cases of Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly.
31:16On the evening of September 29th in 1888, London,
31:19a woman by the name of Catherine Eddowes
31:21was taken into custody for being drunk in the streets.
31:24The police, however, didn't learn her real identity
31:26until after the fact,
31:28as she gave them a fake one during her stay in the drunk tank.
31:30That of Mary Kelly.
31:32If either of those names rings a bell,
31:34it's because they both went on to meet the same grisly fate
31:37at the hands of Jack the Ripper.
31:39Eddowes was killed shortly after being released from custody.
31:41She was his second to last victim,
31:43and one of only two to have her face mutilated.
31:46The other was none other than the real Mary Kelly,
31:49the Ripper's last known victim.
31:51Through DNA, you might be able to satisfy some claims
31:54that she's descended or was an ancestor of somebody today.
31:58Number 17, the Jim twins.
32:01Let's discuss a coincidence that, well, nonetheless odd,
32:04does have a notably happier ending.
32:06Twins James Jim Lewis and James Jim Springer
32:09were separated shortly after birth
32:11and adopted by different families.
32:13They grew up without any contact with one another.
32:16When they finally did meet at the age of 39,
32:18the similarities between their lives proved downright uncanny.
32:25And you have to have it, you know?
32:28And you finally find it, and it's a good feeling to find that thing.
32:31Well, that's the way it was with Jim.
32:33As children, they both had dogs named Toy
32:35and excelled in math and woodworking.
32:44As adults, they were both married twice,
32:47first to women named Linda, then to women named Betty.
32:50When they had sons, they both named them James Allen.
32:53They were both smokers, drove Chevys,
32:55and even chose to vacation at the same Florida beach.
33:06Number 16, the king's double.
33:09For protection, many kings use body doubles.
33:12Apparently, King Umberto I of Italy
33:14came upon his own double by accident.
33:16While eating dinner at a small restaurant,
33:18Umberto noticed that the restaurant owner
33:20was nearly identical in looks to himself.
33:22But they soon discovered more similarities.
33:24They were both born in the same town
33:26on the same day in the same year,
33:28they both married a woman named Margarita,
33:30and the owner had opened his restaurant
33:32on the same day as Umberto was crowned king.
33:34Wait, it gets weirder.
33:36The day after the pair met, on July 29, 1900,
33:39the owner was killed in an accidental shooting.
33:42The same day Umberto was assassinated.
33:45Number 15, James Dean's car.
33:48Actor and icon James Dean
33:50died tragically at the tender age of 24.
33:58In addition to acting, Dean was passionate about cars
34:01to the point that he was contemplating
34:03venturing into professional racing.
34:05Unfortunately, on September 30, 1955,
34:07his dreams were brought to a screeching halt
34:09when he got into a fatal accident
34:11on his way to a race in his brand new Porsche 550 Spyder.
34:14As is often the case with celebrity cars,
34:16the Spyder and its parts have since changed hands
34:18multiple times over,
34:20but they seem to bring bad luck to everyone they touch.
34:23The car's engine has been involved
34:25in a number of subsequent accidents,
34:27one fatal, and the drivetrain another.
34:29Plus, a building where the car was stored caught fire.
34:32Number 14, two Finnish brothers.
34:35They say that twins have an incredibly strong bond
34:38and often know what the other is thinking,
34:40feeling, or doing.
34:42These two Finnish brothers took that bond
34:44to a whole other level in 2002
34:46when they died on the same road in separate accidents
34:48within hours of each other.
34:50The first brother died when he was hit by a truck
34:52while riding his bike.
34:54The second brother died two hours later
34:56under the exact same circumstances,
34:58about one and a half kilometers from the spot
35:00where his brother had been killed earlier.
35:02Number 13, the mysterious monk.
35:05Frustrated with life and depressed,
35:07painter Josef Aigner attempted to end his life
35:09on multiple occasions,
35:11once when he was 18 and once when he was 22.
35:14But according to Ripley's Believe It or Not,
35:16he was stopped both times by the same Capuchin monk.
35:19When he was 30, Aigner was sentenced to death
35:21for his political activities,
35:23but was again saved by the monk,
35:25who intervened on his behalf.
35:27Eventually, Aigner was successful
35:29and killed himself with a pistol when he was 68 years old.
35:32The funeral ceremony was conducted by,
35:34you guessed it, the exact same Capuchin monk,
35:37whose name Aigner had never even learned.
35:40Number 12, falling baby.
35:43Reigning cats and dogs is one thing,
35:45but babies?
35:46One day in 1937,
35:48Detroit street sweeper Josef Figlock
35:50was hit on the head by a baby
35:52who tumbled from a fourth floor window.
35:54Fortunately, Figlock broke the baby's fall,
35:56and while both were injured, the baby lived.
35:58A year later, Figlock was going about his business,
36:00sweeping in an alleyway,
36:02when another child, this time a two-year-old,
36:04fell from the sky.
36:05Right on to Figlock.
36:07Once again, Figlock unwittingly saved the day.
36:09Talk about being in the right place at the right time.
36:12Twice!
36:13Number 11, a painting that predicted Hitler's evil.
36:16Before getting involved in politics
36:18and becoming one of the greatest monsters in human history,
36:21Hitler had aspirations as a painter.
36:23Even after abandoning these, however,
36:25he remained passionate about the arts,
36:27and this painting is said to have been one of his favorites.
36:30Painted by Franz von Stuck,
36:31an artist Hitler long admired,
36:33The Wild Chase is a gloomy and foreboding work
36:36that von Stuck just so happened to complete in 1889,
36:39the year of Hitler's birth.
36:41The painting depicts Wotan, a Germanic god,
36:44leading the mythic wild hunt followed by an army of the dead.
36:47Wotan bears a striking resemblance to Hitler,
36:49and many retrospectively see this painting
36:52as having predicted his rise to power and bloody legacy.
36:55Number 10, the cannibalized boy.
36:58One of the greatest authors of the 19th century,
37:00Edgar Allan Poe,
37:01wrote a book titled
37:02The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.
37:05The book depicted four shipwreck survivors
37:07who eventually killed and ate a boy named Richard Parker.
37:10Several years after the publication of Poe's story,
37:12a yacht called the Minionette sank
37:14and left four survivors stranded at sea.
37:17The three older survivors eventually killed and ate the cabin boy,
37:20whose name was Richard Parker.
37:23Number 9, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
37:26John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
37:28were two of the most important players
37:29in the founding of the United States.
37:31Both played a large role in the creation
37:33and signing of the Declaration of Independence,
37:35which was eventually approved on July 4, 1776.
37:39Although their relationship deteriorated over the years,
37:42they eventually reconciled,
37:44and oddly, died on the exact same day.
37:47That day, July 4, 1826,
37:50exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration.
37:54Number 8, Aztec prediction of Cortes.
37:57In the early 16th century,
37:59the Aztec Empire was at the peak of its prosperity
38:02under Monte Cusoma II.
38:04In 1519, however,
38:06an ancient and deadly prophecy seemingly came true,
38:09bringing unimaginable destruction
38:11to this awe-inspiring civilization.
38:13According to local legend,
38:14Quetzalcoatl, described as being bearded and of white skin,
38:18would one day return from his travels
38:20to once again stake his claim over the Aztec people.
38:23The predicted date on the Mayan calendar
38:25just so happened to coincide with the year
38:27when the Spanish conquistadors arrived,
38:29led by the bearded and white-skinned Hernán Cortés.
38:32Number 7, the 27 Club.
38:35The 27 Club refers to a group of famous people,
38:37mainly musicians,
38:38who have died at the age of 27.
38:41It started in the late 1960s
38:42when Rolling Stone Brian Jones,
38:44Doors frontman Jim Morrison,
38:46Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix all died at this age.
38:49Two and a half decades later,
38:51Kurt Cobain took his life at 27,
38:53and recently, Amy Winehouse died
38:55from substance use disorder issues at the age of 27.
38:58Winehouse actually stated years earlier
39:00that she was worried about dying at 27.
39:02All in all, the club has claimed over 60 artists,
39:05musicians and actors since the start of the 20th century.
39:09Number 6, Mark Twain and Halley's Comet.
39:12Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835,
39:16just two weeks after Halley's Comet was visible on Earth.
39:19Twain, who was the author of
39:20The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
39:21and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
39:23seemed to strongly associate with this celestial event.
39:26In fact, he famously declared,
39:29I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835,
39:31it is coming again next year,
39:33and I expect to go out with it.
39:35It will be the greatest disappointment of my life
39:37if I don't go out with Halley's Comet.
39:39The Almighty has said no doubt,
39:41now here are these two unaccountable freaks,
39:43they came in together, they must go out together.
39:46He died on April 21, 1910,
39:49one day after the comet had returned.
39:52Number 5, Violet Jessop,
39:54also known as Miss Unsinkable.
39:56This Irish-Argentine stewardess
39:58had a knack for being at the wrong place
40:00at the wrong time,
40:01but somehow emerging unscathed.
40:04Violet Jessop was working aboard the RMS Olympic
40:07when it collided with British warship HMS Hawk in 1911.
40:10The Olympic had to limp back to port,
40:12however, this was just a taste of things to come.
40:15Jessop was also aboard the Titanic
40:17when it sank in 1912,
40:19and the HMHS Britannic,
40:21which sank in 1916 due to a sudden explosion,
40:24which was later revealed to have been a mine.
40:26This earned Jessop the nickname Miss Unsinkable.
40:29We're thinking that with her luck,
40:30she was either the best person to stay close to aboard a ship,
40:33or maybe a reason to change ships entirely.
40:36Number 4, a license plate that predicted World War I.
40:40As most historians agree,
40:42the First World War,
40:43which would go on to last four years
40:45and claim the lives of millions,
40:47all began with the death of one man.
40:49On June 28, 1914,
40:51Archduke Franz Ferdinand was killed
40:53by the Serb Yugoslav nationalists.
40:55War soon followed,
40:56drawing in an ever-widening network of allies
40:58into what became a global conflict.
41:00No one had any clue when or how it would end,
41:03with one possible exception,
41:05a license plate.
41:06When looking for answers,
41:07it typically pays to go back to where it all started.
41:10Sure enough,
41:11the very car in which Franz Ferdinand was murdered
41:13contained a prediction.
41:14His license plate was A111118,
41:19which many retroactively read as Armistice,
41:22November 11, 1918.
41:25Number 3, Tamerlane's Tomb.
41:27In June of 1941,
41:29Russian anthropologists,
41:30led by Mikhail Gerasimov,
41:32conducted a dig at the site of the Guryamir.
41:35This mausoleum was the final resting place of Tamerlane,
41:38a Turco-Mongol conqueror
41:39who founded the Timurid Empire
41:41and was thought to be responsible
41:42for the death of up to 17 million people
41:44as a result of his deadly campaigns.
41:46Depending on who you ask, however,
41:48he may have upped the body count post-mortem.
41:51Inside his casket,
41:52the anthropologists reportedly found the inscription,
41:55quote,
42:00They went ahead and opened the tomb anyway,
42:02and three days later,
42:03Operation Barbarossa began.
42:05This Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union
42:07was the largest in human history.
42:10Number 2, The Titan and the Titanic.
42:13In 1898,
42:14Morgan Robertson published a novella
42:16entitled Futility or The Wreck of the Titan.
42:19The plot revolved around the HMS Titan,
42:21a British luxury liner that hit an iceberg
42:23and sank while crossing the northern Atlantic.
42:26Of course, in 1912,
42:27the Titanic sank in a similar fashion,
42:30and that's where things get bizarre.
42:38Both ships were considered unsinkable.
42:40Both hit an iceberg in the month of April,
42:42approximately 400 miles from Newfoundland.
42:44Both were approximately 800 feet long,
42:47and both resulted in the deaths of over 2,000 people.
42:50The lack of life jackets and lifeboats
42:52was also a serious problem for both ships,
42:54tragically so for the real-life Titanic.
43:17Number 1, JFK and Abraham Lincoln.
43:23Lincoln and JFK were elected to Congress
43:25100 years apart,
43:26in 1846 and 1946 respectively.
43:29They then both became president
43:3114 years later in 1860 and 1960.
43:39Both were killed by fatal gunshot wounds to the head,
43:41and succeeded by men named Johnson,
43:43who, wouldn't you know it,
43:45just so happened to be born 100 years apart.
43:47Add to that some other coincidences,
43:49like them dying on Friday,
43:50their family names containing seven letters,
43:52and the fact that they were both famous
43:54for their civil rights efforts,
43:55and you've got two presidents
43:56cut from an eerily similar cloth.
44:15Is it a coincidence?
44:16Do you know of any other strange coincidences in history?
44:19Let us know in the comments below.
44:21Is it possible that there are no coincidences?
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