It’s common practice to refer to horror films where there were significant problems during production as “cursed.” The streaming service Shudder has an entire series devoted to this concept. As it happens, focusing on events surrounding horror movies exclusively is unnecessary. You can find uncanny occurrences across all genres. 

We’ll be looking both behind the curtain and at the content of programming released for public consumption. Whether it be the private lives of actors or the names in a script, there are plenty of occurrences on both the small and big screen that will make you wonder if there’s something very strange at work behind our understanding of reality. More than a few will make you wonder if that thing is sinister indeed. 

10. Roundhay Garden

Our first stop is at the very birth of cinema, if not sooner. The first piece of motion picture film ever shot from a single camera (so early in the process that it was printed on paper instead of celluloid film) Roundhay Garden was a two second long sequence by inventor Louis Le Prince, shot in the front yard of his in-laws in 1888 in Leeds, England. Louis’s mother-in-law Sarah Whitely and son Adolphe Le Prince are on screen, with Adolphe walking parallel to the camera and Sarah and her husband dancing. To watch it today, you wouldn’t suspect that the first motion picture seemed to bestow a sort of curse upon its cinematographer and stars. 

Within ten days, Sarah Whitely died. Indeed, she had collapsed from the heat during the process of shooting the film, and spent her last ten days trying to recover from it. Within two years, Louis Le Prince disappeared from a train on September 16, 1890, while on a trip to arrange a screening in New York City which would have been the first public exhibition of his invention. As if that weren’t enough tragedy for a home movie, eleven years after that, Adolphe died very suspiciously while out hunting. Even at the time, there was considerable speculation that no less than Thomas Edison had done in Louis Le Prince to get rid of a competitor for his own cinematic inventions and then his rival’s son to put a stop to investigations, but no conclusive evidence has ever been brought to public attention. 

9. The Tall Target

John Kennedy has to save newly-elected president Abraham Lincoln from assassination. Sounds like a wacky time travel comedy? It’s not, it’s the premise of Anthony Mann’s historical crime thriller The Tall Target, starring Dick Powell as Police Sergeant John Kennedy. If it seems like ridiculous pandering, consider that the movie was released in 1951, back when Kennedy was a representative in the US House and before the publication of Profiles in Courage which would do so much to increase his national prominence. 

The events of the film are loosely based on a real event. Specifically the process of moving Lincoln to Washington DC for his 1861 inauguration under heightened alert because the Pinkerton Agency had caught word that there was an attempt planned on the extremely polarizing president’s life. It became known as the Baltimore Plot, for the period of the journey on February 22, 1861 spent on the Baltimore rail line. There was no Police Sergeant John Kennedy involved, though there was a H. F. Kenney who accompanied the Pinkertons during the escort mission. Part of Kenney’s contribution was giving a carriage driver intentionally bad directions in case the driver was intending to bring them into an ambush, which would have potential for the setup to a wacky comedy instead of the taut thriller Mann intended. 

8. All My Children

With more than 10,700 episodes of melodrama over its run from 1970 to 2011, there was plenty of room for morbidness both on and off camera to happen. Unquestionably the most morbid began in August 1997. During an episode that month, actress Eva LaRue’s character Maria Santos was on a plane. It crashed, and she did not survive. In a moment that probably would not be included today, her significant other Edmund was reassured that at least she would live on through her children, which were “the greatest gift she could have given.” 

Fast forward to September 10, 2001. Eva LaRue was booked for a flight on American Airlines Flight 11. Because she was eight months pregnant with her daughter Kaya (she’d been in New York City for a baby shower) she wanted to sleep in and rescheduled her flight at the last moment. As a result, she rescheduled her way out of being one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, as she later tweeted about and confirmed in an interview. If this sounds familiar, it’s because a similar narrow miss happened to Seth McFarlane. For her part, LaRue claimed that the brush with death was the kind of experience that “took the fear out of you.”  

7. Poltergeist

While the intro said the list wouldn’t focus on horror movies exclusively, there was nothing about excluding them, and the events relating to this 1982 classic are very harrowing. Shortly after the first film’s release in 1982, Dominique Dunne, who played the teenage character Dana, was strangled to death by boyfriend John Thomas Sweeney on the driveway of her home in West Hollywood. Specifically the killing took place on October 30, and in 1986 became a subject of public outcry again when in 1986 he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, and it didn’t even prevent him from returning to his old job as head chef at The Chronicle restaurant. As many pointed out at the time, strangulation was nearly the cause of death for Robbie, Dana’s younger brother in the film, and Oliver Robbins, the actor who reportedly was only prevented from asphyxiating by Steven Spielberg’s intervention. 

Arguably even more disturbing was the fate of Heather O’Rourke, who played the character if Carol when she was only seven years old. She would star in all three original Poltergeist movies and become perhaps the most iconic character (if not her then definitely her line “they’re here”). And in 1988, when she was only twelve years old, she passed away during an emergency surgery for an ailment induced by tainted well water. She and her costar were buried in the same cemetery, adding to the sense there was some grim curse on the Poltergeist films.     

6. The West Wing

In the final season of this Aaron Sorkin-created drama, the character Leo McGarry, a war criminal and advisor to President Josiah Bartlett, had two heart attacks. One at Camp David where he was left in the woods for several hours, and another on the night of an election where he was the running mate for Matthew Santos, the second one proving fatal for the character. Actor John Spencer was not featured in the scene where his character’s dead body is discovered, because he had passed away before the episode was produced.  

John Spencer was just shy of 59 years old at the time of his passing, so he was still relatively young as far as average life expectancy went in 2005. To add to the discomfort of fans giving that final season a rewatch, McGarry says of his campaign staff that they’re going to kill him in an episode that aired days before his passing. According to Martin Sheen, after Spencer passed away, the entire season was rewritten to change the outcome of the season-long election arc. 

5. Troy

This 2004 film from Das Boot director Wolfgang Petersen is not very celebrated today. Commercially it was only a success due to worldwide box office, critically it was at best a modest success. I was widely criticized for being a wildly unfaithful adaptation of Homer’s The Iliad by people who never would have read the ancient epic in their lives. Yet there was a curious form of verisimilitude, or maybe if you were a form of method acting, that occurred during the shoot. 

During one of the stunts, star Brad Pitt injured his achilles tendon in what he referred to as a “bout of stupid irony,” as a major development in the original Iliad is the character Achilles being brought down by a vulnerability in the same body part. This was no trifling occurrence for the production, as there was shutdown for weeks as he healed. The delay caused even more headaches for Petersen when it kept the crew in place for a hurricane to strike and destroy much of their equipment and sets. It’s surprising that Troy isn’t more remembered for being a cursed movie shoot.    

4. Above Suspicion

Christopher Reeve was of course best known for playing all-American hero Superman for four films over a decade. Behind the scenes he bolstered his good guy image through activism such as for Amnesty International and leading a protest march against Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Still throughout his career he would be cast in roles that subverted that image such as in 1982’s dark comedy Deathtrap, 1991’s Bump in the Night where he played a child predator, and 1995’s Above Suspicion, where he played a man who married his wife and brother and tried to fake paralysis as an alibi. In what might have been stunt casting, Reeve’s real life wife, Dana Reeve, played a detective investigating his character. 

Those with the least familiarity with Reeve’s later life know of his 1995 horse riding accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down. What takes it from the realm of what Brad Pitt called stupid irony to viciously cruel irony is that the injury occurred within days of Above Suspicion’s premiere. For what it’s worth, Dana Reeve said in interviews that she disliked sentimental depictions of Reeve’s misfortune while he was doing charity work for the disabled, so during their time, they seemingly didn’t want anyone’s pity.    

3. McMillan & Wife

This police procedural about the married couple Commissioner Stewart McMillan and his wife Sally solving crimes is little discussed today, yet considering it ran from 1971 to 1977 it enjoyed a decently long run. It’s not hard to see why. The fact its episodes were 60-90 minutes meant it was a bit more difficult to syndicate than concurrent police procedurals like Columbo. It also doesn’t help that the movie had Susan St. James’s character Sally and her son killed off over a contract dispute did not reflect too well on the artistic integrity of the production. This decision took on a horribly grim note decades later. 

By 2004, Susan St. James had married NBC executive Dick Ebersol and had a fourteen year-old son with him named Teddy. On Thanksgiving weekend that year, St. James’s husband and son were in a plane crash. Dick Ebersol survived, but their son did not. St. James said of the ordeal that her way of dealing with it was to remind herself and her family that they should move past it, and “resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other guy dies.”  

2. The Omen

Similar to the hype surrounding The Exorcist during production, there were many stories of how so many things went wrong during the production of The Omen that it seemed as if the forces of Satan were working to sabotage the shoot. As pointed out by Screenrant regarding The Exorcist, many of these supposedly uncanny occurrences were more the result of irresponsible filmmaking and salacious marketing and promotion, and that of course a process that lasts more than nine months is going to have some problems. So it is with The Omen as well, though there is one anecdote that requires no participation by the Devil or anything supernatural to be bloodchilling. 

A year after the release of The Omen, special effects artist John Richardson was driving through Belgium with his assistant Elizabeth Moore while they were working on A Bridge Too Far, the World War II film about Operation Market Gardens, a failed Allied effort to capture a number of Dutch bridges in late 1944. There was a grievous car accident, and as a result, Elizabeth Moore was decapitated. Richardson himself reported how the accident was uncannily similar to a decapitation effect he had taken part in during the shoot for the Omen, and reportedly the accident occurred near the town of Ommen.  

1. The China Syndrome 

This 1979 film starring Jane Fonda, Michael Douglas, and Jack Lemmon centered around an attempt to smuggle footage out of a nuclear power plant showing that a nuclear meltdown had very narrowly been avoided was one of the big hits of its year. It was condemned by many in the nuclear energy industry as alarmist, and received a form of vindication that surely brought cold comfort to its makers when the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, a disaster which cost more than a billion dollars in clean up and which certain (heavily disputed) studies claim caused a 64% increase of some local cancer rates, occurred within 12 days of its premiere.

Unlike The Omen and The Exorcist, reportedly the studio did not try to cash in on real life tragedy, and the word from studio executives and stars like Michael Douglas was to tell any news outlet who asked “no comment.” Despite that, Michael Gray, who wrote the original script for The China Syndrome, accepted a job writing an article covering the Three Mile Island disaster for Rolling Stone Magazine, which became typical of the way other news outlets would try to spread the story of how The China Syndrome and Three Mile Island were comparable. 

Dustin Koski also cowrote Return of the Living with Jonathan “Bogleech” Wojcik, a horror comedy about the first sighting of a living creature centuries after all Earth died and became ghosts. 

Listen, we live in a big, strange world. So big and so strange, in fact, that the weirdest possible day would be one where nothing weird happens at all. Coincidences are a perfectly normal and expected part of life, in other words – usually nothing more than unrelated events being strung together by human brains that are wired to see patterns, even when there’s nothing there. But some coincidences are so bizarre we can’t just dismiss them as business as usual. Let’s take a look at some of the wildest coincidences that ever actually happened. 

10. Struck by lightning 7 times

Roy Sullivan, a park ranger in the United States, holds a bleak record: the guy has been struck by lightning not once, not twice, but seven separate times between 1942 and 1977. The odds of that happening to anyone are roughly 4.5 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. To be fair, it’s far more likely to happen to a man who spends all his time in a place like Shenandoah Valley, Virginia as opposed to say, a software engineer. But still, it’s not normal for anyone to get fried like that. 

The circumstances of these lightning strikes were varied—Sullivan was struck inside a ranger station, in his truck, while on patrol, and even after his park ranger career had concluded. The repeated lightning strikes not only caused significant physical injuries, including burns and other health issues, but they also brought Sullivan an unusual and unwanted level of attention due to the statistical improbability of such recurrent lightning strikes on a single individual. Sadly, Roy did not get super powers from any of the strikes.

9. The weirdest double tragedy ever

Let’s clarify that there’s an even more bizarre version of this story doing the rounds online. In that version, Erskine Lawrence Ebbin was struck and killed by the same taxi, with the same driver and passenger, that struck and killed his brother twin Neville at the exact same spot exactly one year later to the day. Pretty wild, right? 

Now, not all of that is true. But it’s pretty close. Erskine and Neville weren’t twins, but they were both 17 when they were killed in accidents that, yes, involved the same cab with the same driver and passenger, on the same street, while riding the same moped. It is worth noting that the area of Bermuda this took place in was small, sparsely populated, and had a smaller number of cab drivers than say, New York City. But still, we say this is wild and tragic enough to qualify for placement on this list.

8. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams die on the same day

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson have quite a bit in common. Both served as president (the 2nd and 3rd, respectively), after all, and both wore goofy looking powdered wigs. But that’s to be expected of America’s founding fathers. 

What’s less expected is that both men died on the same day, just hours apart. And not just any day – it was July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence they’d both had a huge hand in (Jefferson especially). As you can imagine, news didn’t travel very fast in the early 19th century. Allegedly, Adams’ last words were “Jefferson still lives.” Which wasn’t true – Thomas had passed away hours earlier. But the nation did mourn when it learned the truth. And, interestingly, it mourned again exactly five years later on July 4, 1831, when another president, James Monroe, breathes his last. Maybe the British had something to do with this?

7. The only man who’s ever been nuked twice

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a Japanese engineer, holds a remarkable distinction—he is the only person officially recognized to have survived both atomic bombings during World War II. On August 6, 1945, he was in the city of Hiroshima for a work-related trip when the first atomic bomb was dropped by a US B-29. He suffered injuries but managed to escape the immediate blast zone, even though tens of thousands of others in the area were vaporized or suffered agonizing deaths due to injuries or radiation poisoning.

Despite being wounded, Yamaguchi returned to his hometown of Nagasaki, where he arrived just in time for the second atomic bombing on August 9, 1945. He survived this second devastating event as well. Later in life, he became an outspoken advocate for nuclear disarmament and shared his firsthand experiences to emphasize the horrors of nuclear warfare. Thank God, weapons like that haven’t been used in warfare since. And hopefully they never will be again. 

6. Jim and Jim, separated at birth

Jim Lewis and Jim Springer were identical twins separated at birth and raised in different adoptive families. Their unique life story gained attention due to the coincidences and similarities that emerged in their lives despite being apart. In 1979, when they were 39, the twins were reunited. Already a pretty nice story. But we’re just getting started. 

Both Jims had been named James by their respective adoptive families. Ok, weird but not insanely so – it’s not like James is that uncommon of a name. But get a load of these: both had a childhood dog named Toy. Both had married and divorced women named Linda and remarried to women named Betty. Both had a son, one named James Alan and the other named – let us check our notes here – James Allan.

Their similarities did not end there. They both pursued similar professions; Lewis was a security guard, while Springer was a deputy sheriff. Both had skills in carpentry and mechanical drawing, and they enjoyed woodworking in their spare time. We could keep going. But we’re starting to get a little spooked. 

5. Mark Twain and Halley’s Comet

Mark Twain, the celebrated American author and humorist, was born on November 30, 1835. What’s so interesting about that date? Well, it was shortly after the passing of Halley’s Comet, one of the most famous and visible comets, with a distinctive bright tail. That alone isn’t that amazing. Interestingly, Halley’s Comet is visible from Earth approximately once every 76 years, and its appearance has been recorded for centuries. 

Twain had a fascination with this celestial event. He wasn’t alone – groups of people all over the planet had their own stories and superstitions about the comet. But Twain in particular often remarked that he came into the world with the comet, and he expected to leave with it as well. We’re not sure how he guessed that, but, true to his prediction, Twain passed away on April 21, 1910, once again just a day after the comet passed by Earth. 

4. A Lincoln saved by a Booth

On April 13, 1865, days after Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the American Civil War, famous stage actor John Wilkes Booth assassinated president Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., while watching a play. It was a tragic end to a tragic chapter in US history. But it’s also bizarre, since, a year or two earlier (accounts differ), John’s brother had saved Abraham’s son.

It’s true. The incident took place on a train platform in Jersey City in 1863 or 1864, when Robert Todd Lincoln – a young lawyer at the time – lost his footing and stumbled, very nearly falling onto the tracks. Before anyone could react, Edwin Booth, who happened to be nearby, swiftly pulled him away from the edge, preventing a potentially fatal accident. Another bizarre little factoid here: Booth happened to be traveling with John T. Ford, owner and namesake of – you guessed it – Ford’s Theater, where president Lincoln was fatally shot. 

3. November 9 in Germany

Often referred to as the country’s “Day of Fate,” November 9 has just so happened to host a number of pivotal events in German history. On November 9, 1918, at the end of the First World War, Kaiser Wilhelm II was forced to abdicate his throne by the victorious Entente (Allied) powers, signaling the beginning of the Weimar Republic of Germany’s interwar period.  

On November 9, 1938, on what became known as Kristallnacht or the “Night of Broken Glass,” violent anti-Jewish pogroms erupted across Nazi Germany. Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues were vandalized and destroyed, and many Jews were arrested, injured, or killed. This brutal event signified a harrowing escalation of anti-Semitic policies, setting the stage for the Holocaust.

And on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, symbolizing the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany. We imagine the whole country is on the edge of its seat every time this date rolls around, wondering what’s coming down the pipeline next. 

2. Why solar eclipses are possible

Solar eclipses happen when the moon passes between the earth and sun, blocking out the sun and turning day into night. It’s a predictable, understandable, and still fascinating and unmissable event that occurs every few years. 

But it’s pretty bizarre, if you think about it, that the moon just so happens to be the right size, and the right distance from the earth, to almost perfectly block out the sun. If it was any closer, any further, or any bigger, the phenomenon wouldn’t be nearly as wild to see. 

Specifically, the moon’s diameter is about 400 times smaller than that of the sun, but it’s also almost exactly 400 times closer to the earth. This allows for a perfect blockage that still leaves the sun’s corona eerily visible around the edge. But please just take our word for that last part and don’t look directly at it.

1. Stephen Hawking’s amazing lifespan

On January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England, future physicist Stephen Hawking was born. But January 8th also happened to be significant for another world-changing cosmologist—Galileo Galilei, the Italian polymath who pioneered contributions to modern science, passed away on January 8, 1642, precisely 300 years before Hawking’s birth. 

It doesn’t stop there. Stephen Hawking passed away on March 14, 2018. Well, March 14 is no ordinary day, either. First of all, it’s renowned as Pi Day (3.14, get it?), a day dedicated to celebrating the mathematical constant ? (pi). And it’s also the birthday of another scientific luminary, Albert Einstein (ever heard of him?), whose groundbreaking theories of relativity changed our understanding of the universe and set the stage for Hawking’s own discoveries, particularly those revolving around black holes, singularities, and the nature of time. But we doubt any of these three geniuses could’ve seen this coming.

Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good. Other times, if it weren’t for bad luck, we’d have no luck at all. In both cases, the cosmic game of chance can twist and turn on a dime, shaping history for better or worse through sheer, often stunning coincidence.

From the nation’s very existence to its national pastime, fortune has played as key a role as fortitude in winning the day. Conversely, seemingly insignificant circumstances—including, of all things, a window frame—have played outsize roles in determining the direction of the nation.

10 The Fortuitous Fog That Saved Washington’s Army

The United States came incredibly close to surviving a grand total of six weeks.

In August 1776, General George Washington and the bulk of the Continental Army were defending present-day Brooklyn. In what became known as the Battle of Long Island, his forces were outnumbered, outflanked, and outfought. Even considering the lopsided British victories during the war’s early stages, this was an outright disaster. On August 27, 970 Continental soldiers were dead or wounded and more than 1,000 were taken prisoner. Meanwhile, the British lost just 63 men.

Washington had his back to the East River and at least 15,000 British Redcoats closing in. Then Mother Nature saved the United States.

The next day, it poured, pausing both armies. On August 29, the British decided to wait out a dense morning fog before striking a decisive blow.

Around noon, Washington ordered his men “to impress every kind of water craft . . . that could be kept afloat . . . and have them all in the east harbor of the city by dark.” Extremely atypical of New York summer weather, the fog held the entire day, enabling an ever-so-silent nighttime evacuation across the river to Manhattan.^[1]

The fortuitous fog saved about 9,000 men that the fledgling Continental Army simply could not afford to lose. The cause would almost certainly have been lost that day. Instead, the British awoke the morning of August 30 to capture an enemy that had literally vanished into thin—or rather, thick—air.

9 Don’t I Know You? Lewis, Clark, And A Tribal Chief’s Long-Lost Sister

Dense forests, deep rivers, vast plains. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark braved forbidding, unexplored (by white men) wilderness in their search for the ultimately mythical Northwest Passage. Beginning in May 1804 (following the Louisiana Purchase), the now-legendary Corps of Discovery Expedition brought the explorers from St. Louis all the way west to the Pacific Ocean.

Of the myriad factors impossible for Lewis and Clark to have anticipated, none loomed larger than the Rocky Mountains. The Corps needed horses to get across the Rockies and didn’t have them. The Shoshone tribe had horses, but they had never seen white people before.

But they had seen Sacagawea. Incredibly, she was the long-lost sister of the tribe’s chief, Cameahwait.^[2]

Far from being a guide on the expedition, Sacagawea had been kidnapped from the Shoshone as a young girl by a rival band and eventually sold to a French-Canadian trapper accompanying the trip.

In an instant, Sacagawea went from slave to lifesaver. The chief thanked the corps for the joyous occasion with horses, supplies, and guides. Who knows when or if America would have laid claim to the remainder of the continent were it not for the luckiest family reunion in US history.

8 The ‘Pick from Heaven’ That Gave Rise To America’s Pastime

Nothing is more American than baseball. Since its first official game played in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1846, the old ballgame has been remarkably consistent. Familiarities like nine innings per game and nine players per team have been part of baseball since its first official rules, published barely a decade into the game’s existence in 1857.

But no single statute shaped the game like the distance between bases: exactly 27.432 meters (90 ft). Without that exact distance (in feet), the game would have been so drastically different that it may never have proven so enduringly popular.

Baseball is a game of inches played on a sprawling field. Routine plays—for example, a grounder to the shortstop—often result in close plays at first base. Generally, the runner is out or safe by just a step or two. The arbitrariness of 27.432 meters (90 ft) is so fortuitously perfect that its adoption so early in the game’s life span has been called the “pick from heaven.”^[3]

Those writing the rules in 1857 couldn’t possibly have predicted modern superstars like Mike Trout getting nipped at first by milliseconds or Jose Altuve stealing a base by a fingertip. Considering its tremendous significance, 90 is the luckiest number in all of American sports.

7 Hide-And-Go-Shoot: The Lost Company That Saved The Union

As brutal and impassioned as the US Civil War was, historians like the renowned Shelby Foote knew that the South’s odds of prevailing were incredibly long. The Union had more than twice as many soldiers and far more manufacturing resources than the Confederacy.

One of the rare chances for the South to potentially win the war came at Gettysburg’s Battle of Little Round Top. If the Confederates had taken this strategically important hill, they would have turned the Union flank and imperiled their position throughout the broader landscape.

Many know about Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s famed bayonet charge. And while it’s true that the unorthodox desperation tactic led to many Alabamans surrendering, other rebel troops made a beeline toward a wall to regroup. Had they reached the position, their superior ammunition levels may have turned the tide back in their favor.

But by sheer luck, behind the wall were about 40 Union soldiers led by Captain Walter Morrill, who had been cut off from Chamberlain’s line hours earlier. For over one hour, these men had been hiding so effectively that no one, not even Chamberlain, knew they were there.

The ensuing barrage of bullets led to scores more Confederates killed. The rest surrendered or fled. The hidden heroes of Little Round Top had saved the day, and with it, perhaps the Union cause itself.^[4]

6 You (Only) Sunk My Battleship: Pearl Harbor Could Have Been Far Worse

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was an unmitigated disaster. The stats: 2,403 Americans killed, nearly 1,200 wounded, over 325 US planes destroyed or damaged, and 19 ships (including eight battleships) severely impaired or destroyed.

Amazingly, the losses would have been far worse if not for some incredible good luck. By sheer coincidence, all three of the aircraft carriers assigned to Pearl Harbor were off-site that day.

The USS Lexington had left Pearl Harbor on December 5 to transport a dive bomber division to Midway Island, while the USS Saratoga had recently completed a lengthy retrofit on the mainland and was days away from returning to Hawaii.^[5]

Most fortunate of all, the USS Enterprise had been delivering a Marine fighter squadron to Wake Island. The carrier was scheduled to return to Pearl Harbor on December 6, but bad weather delayed its estimated arrival until the following afternoon. As a result, it missed the surprise attack by mere hours.

Considering how vital air superiority is in modern warfare, the uphill climb to retake the Pacific would have taken far longer if the US had lost its air carriers that day. Also, in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, America’s fears of a Japanese attack on the West Coast may have become reality, killing untold numbers of civilians.

5 Let Them Eat Popcorn: The Accidental Invention Of The Microwave

Perhaps the only thing as American as baseball is fast food. And the household item we use for the fastest food possible happened because a physicist had a sweet tooth.

Percy Spencer was a physicist—a pretty good one, actually. During World War II, he’d worked with the military to invent a more efficient radar system that relied on microwave radio signals generated by something called a magnetron.^[6]

One day as he was building magnetrons, Spencer discovered that a candy bar in his pocket had melted. Testing his fledgling theory, he experimented with a variety of foods, including popcorn kernels. Soon, Spencer had built the first true microwave oven by enclosing the heat-producing energy in a metal box, which controlled the whole heating process.

Though patented in 1946, the first mass-produced microwave oven wasn’t introduced until 1967 because the technology took that long to condense and make reasonably affordable. By 1975, a million were sold in the US every year. What would America be without pizza rolls and Hot Pockets?

4 The Window Frame That Doomed JFK

Seven months before he assassinated President John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald did what he’d done pretty much his whole life until that fateful day in Dealey Plaza: He failed.

After failing as a US Marine, failing to gain his desired celebrity as a defector in and then back from the USSR, and failing to provide for his wife and young children, Oswald came as close as he’d ever come to accomplishing something when he nearly assassinated Major General Edwin Walker on April 10, 1963.

Among other right-leaning tendencies, Walker was an ardent anti-communist. With his romanticism for the Soviet Union and Cuba, Oswald had found an ideal target for his marksmanship. Until a window frame intervened.^[7]

The bullet grazed the frame before basically parting Walker’s hair—the nearest of near misses.

Had Oswald succeeded in killing Walker, two possibilities may have saved JFK. First would have been a far broader police investigation that may have apprehended Oswald. If that had happened, Oswald’s raging desire to be significant may have finally been fulfilled. Also, his lifelong losing streak may have been snapped if his bullet had not nicked that frame. A thin slice of wood may have immeasurably altered US history.

3 Hole In Two: The Confusing Ballot That Swayed The 2000 Election

The month-long Florida recount battle to decide the 2000 presidential election had X factors galore. A partisan, cherry-picked recount demand by Al Gore and an alleged voter roll purge of Jacksonville-area African Americans were just two controversies.

But the freakiest and perhaps most damning oddity was Palm Beach County’s “butterfly ballot,” a punch card design that laid out the candidates’ names on two pages rather than one. This allowed the use of larger font sizes for the area’s sizable elderly population.^[8]

Good intentions, unintended results: The ballot ended up confusing the heck out of voters—so many, in fact, that it likely cost Gore the presidency.

Some 6,600 voters punched Al Gore’s name and that of another candidate—usually the Reform Party’s Pat Buchanan, atypically placed above the major party Democrat on the ballot—nullifying their votes. About 1,600 punched George W. Bush and another, nullifying their votes. Considering that Bush officially won Florida—and with it, the White House—by just 537 votes, it’s believable that several times that many voters intended to vote for Gore in Palm Beach.

2 The Ill-Timed Financial Crisis That Flatlined McCain’s 2008 Presidential Run

Luck giveth, luck taketh away. Eight years later, it was the Republican candidate who got extremely unlucky. This time, it was something far bigger than a ballot.

The final tallies from the 2008 presidential election appear closer to a rout than a nail-biter. Barack Obama won nearly 10 million more votes than John McCain and won the electoral college by a decisive 365–173.

But a nail-biter it was. In fact, many polls in early September had the race deadlocked. Then the economic system of the United States almost collapsed.

Of course, the financial crisis itself was no coincidence, having resulted from poor policy-making by both parties. The coincidence was this long-simmering pot coming to a rolling boil less than two months before a presidential election.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008. The government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on September 17. The bank bailout on October 3. Game, set, and match.

When a law called the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act passes a month before a presidential election, the party of the sitting president loses.^[9] Far from being a landslide loser, John McCain was a victim of circumstance with a real chance at winning just weeks earlier.

1 The Inglorious Return Of Carlos Danger

Let’s not relitigate the 2016 US presidential election. In a contest where the winner lost the popular vote and won three decisive states by less than 80,000 votes combined, anything and everything that happened may have swayed it.

So let’s not argue. Rather, let’s all agree on this: It sure is some creepy coincidence that the husband of one of the candidate’s top aides liked to sext with his kid in the background. And that coincidence led to an unforeseen final chapter in the saga of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Oh, and did we mention that the guy’s name is Weiner?

So, an investigation that was conducted and completed by the FBI—the probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state—was reopened only because the husband of a staffer did something so egregious that it warranted an investigation by the FBI.^[10]

And Weiner, also known by his avatar pseudonym Carlos Danger, managed to accomplish all this during the final stages of the ugliest presidential race ever. You take the cake, Carlos. Just don’t take any more photos.

Christopher Dale frequently writes on society, politics, and sobriety-based issues. His work has appeared in The Daily Beast, NY Daily News, Parents.com, and New York Newsday, and he regularly contributes to TheFix.com, a sober-lifestyle website. Follow him on Twitter.

Given how many humans have existed in the world and how many events and incidents, both big and small, happen every day, history is littered with examples of strange coincidences. But the ones we will be looking at today are so unusual that they strain credulity and, should they have come from the pages of a book, they would have been deemed contrived or unbelievable. 

10. Poe’s Tale of Cannibalism

In 1838, Edgar Allan Poe wrote and published The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. It wasn’t one of his better-known works and even the writer himself later dismissed it as “a very silly book.” Basically, it tells the story of the eponymous character after he becomes a stowaway on a ship called the Grampus. 

At one point, the ship wrecks during a storm and only four men survive and are washed ashore. With no food whatsoever, after a few days they resort to the most drastic solution – cannibalism. They draw straws and the unlucky one is a young man named Richard Parker who is killed and eaten.

At first, this would seem like a straightforward, albeit grisly story. But then we move forward 46 years and something strange happens. In 1884, a yacht called the Mignonette left England headed for Sydney, Australia. Carrying four men, it also shipwrecked and left the seafarers stranded with no food. As a last resort, they also cannibalized one of their own – a 17-year-old named Richard Parker. The only main difference was that the survivors saw no need to draw straws as the real-life Parker had fallen ill after drinking seawater and was considered a goner. 

Eerie coincidences aside, the case that followed after the remaining men were rescued and arrested for murder represented a landmark ruling in English law. It stated that necessity does not excuse murder, meaning you cannot kill someone else to save your own life.

9. Where the War Began and Ended

On July 21, 1861, the First Battle of Bull Run marked the first major engagement in the American Civil War. Of course, the war was horrible for many people, but it was a particularly strange inconvenience for one wholesale grocer named Wilmer McLean. He lived on a plantation near Manassas, Virginia, and the Bull Run River passed right through his land. In fact, most of the battle took place on his property and the Confederate leader, General P.G.T. Beauregard even commandeered McLean’s house to use as his headquarters.

Obviously, McLean and his family couldn’t live in the middle of a war so they relocated. A few years later, they were residing in a house near a village called Appomattox Court House. As it happens, that is where the last battle of the Civil War took place. Afterwards, Confederate General Robert E. Lee officially surrendered to Union leader Ulysses S. Grant. And he did it in the parlor of Wilmer McLean’s new home.  

The McLeans later moved back to their previous estate and simply abandoned the house in Appomattox County. They also defaulted on the loans they took out to buy it so “Surrender House”, as it came to be known, was confiscated and sold at auction. Today, it operates as a museum and it is a designated National Historical Monument. As for Wilmer McLean, he liked to say that the Civil War “began in his front yard and ended in his front parlor.”

8. The Curse of Tecumseh

Ever since 1840, American presidents have died according to a pattern which is remarkable enough that people have ascribed it to a curse. Every president who is elected in a year ending in 0 (something which happens every two decades) is fated to die in office.

First was William Henry Harrison. Elected in 1840, he died of pneumonia a month after being sworn in. Then, in 1860 came Abraham Lincoln, and we all know how that ended. In 1880, James Garfield was elected president and he was also assassinated by a man named Charles Guiteau. 

William McKinley might have escaped this alleged curse if he stuck at just one term. Alas, in 1900 he was elected president to his second term, and a year later, he was shot and killed by an anarchist. Next up was Warren G. Harding, who suffered a stroke three years after being elected in 1920. Afterwards came Franklin Roosevelt who passed away of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1945. While he did die in office, he didn’t actually die during the term which allegedly sealed his fate. And last, but not least, there was JFK, who won the 1960 election and whose assassination is all too well-known.

As you can see, seven presidents followed this extraordinary pattern. Many see it for what it probably is – a series of incredible coincidences, but others claim it is a curse placed originally on William Henry Harrison by Tecumseh, leader of the Shawnee people, for the former’s role in Tecumseh’s Rebellion. 

Ronald Reagan would have been next in line. He was elected in 1980 and, although someone did try to kill him, he survived his injuries and died of old age decades after he left office. Even if the curse was real, it appears that he broke it. 

7. The Church Explosion

At 7:25 p.m., March 1, 1950, the West Side Baptist Church in Beatrice, Nebraska, exploded due to a natural gas leak ignited by the fire from the furnace. It was a Wednesday and every Wednesday at 7:20 p.m. sharp, the church choir gathered there to practice. People were expecting the worst as they approached the smoking rubble, but it soon became apparent that nobody had been injured in the blast. Even though the choir director was very strict about tardiness, on this particular night, none of the 15 choir members arrived on time.

It wasn’t one single thing that caused the delays, either, but rather a series of minor occurrences that detained each person enough to evade the deadly blast. The reverend and his family, for example, were late because his wife had to iron a dress at the last moment. Two sisters both had car trouble. Two high school girls wanted to finish listening to a radio program, while another student was struggling with her geometry homework. The pianist fell asleep after dinner. A man was late because he wanted to finish writing a letter he kept putting off, while one woman was simply feeling lazy because it was cold outside and her home was warm and cozy. 

And so went all the other excuses. Unsurprisingly, given the nature of the circumstances, some people considered it divine intervention.

6. Right Place, Right Time

Joseph Figlock became a hero of Detroit due to a bizarre series of events that happened over the course of a year. One morning in 1937, Figlock was at his job as a street sweeper when he was struck by something that landed on his head and shoulders. That “something” was a baby girl who fell out a four-story window. Because Figlock broke her fall, the infant survived her drop that, otherwise, would have almost surely been fatal.

A year later, the street sweeper was back at his job when he was, again, hit by a falling object. And you guessed it – it was another baby. This time, it was 2-year-old David Thomas who also fell out of his window on the fourth floor. This baby did sustain some injuries but, once more, had escaped certain doom thanks to Joseph Figlock being in the right place, at the right time.

5. Miss Unsinkable

Violet Jessop was born in Argentina to Irish immigrants in 1887. When she turned 21, she found work as a ship stewardess and, in 1911, secured a position aboard the RMS Olympic, the first of the Olympic-class ocean liners built by the White Star Line at the start of the century.

At the time, these were the largest, most luxurious ships in the world. Jessop was probably thrilled with her new job but, pretty soon, she might have reconsidered her fortunes. In September 1911, Jessop was onboard the Olympic when it collided with a warship called the HMS Hawke. The collision wasn’t too bad and the ocean liner managed to make it to port without any fatalities.

This incident didn’t deter Jessop from continuing her career as a stewardess. Although she was content aboard the Olympic, her friends persuaded her that it would make for a much more exciting experience to work aboard the White Star Line’s new ocean liner. After all, this vessel was proclaimed to be “unsinkable” and its name was the Titanic. 

You already know how this went down – just four days into its maiden voyage, the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank. Jessop survived the ordeal as she was lowered down into lifeboat 16 which was later picked up by the RMS Carpathia. She later recalled that, as the boat was being lowered, an officer put a baby in her lap. Later, aboard the Carpathia, a woman leaped at her, snatched the baby and ran. Jessop always assumed that was the mother, but she never saw either one of them again.

Then World War II started and Jessop served as a nurse for the British Red Cross. She worked aboard the Britannic, which was the third and last of the Olympic-class ocean liners and had been repurposed into a hospital ship. In 1916, the vessel suffered damage from a mine explosion and sank in the Aegean Sea. For the third time in five years, Violet Jessop had survived a shipwreck, retroactively earning her the nickname “Miss Unsinkable.”

4. The Opposing Graves

Just outside the Belgian town of Mons sits the St. Symphorien Military Cemetery which serves as the final resting place for over 500 soldiers who died in the First World War.

Many of these men perished in the Battle of Mons which took place on August 23, 1914, and is considered to be the first major action of the British army in the war. One of these men, however, died a little earlier. John Parr was a private who was born in London and lied about his age so he could enlist. He served as a reconnaissance cyclist and scouted the area ahead of his battalion. However, he was gunned down by enemy fire and died on August 21, at only 17 years of age. He is generally considered to be the first British serviceman killed in action during the First World War.

His grave is at St. Symphorien and opposite of it, just a few yards away, is the grave of Private George Ellison. He died years later on November 11, 1918. This date is significant because it is, in fact, the day that Germany and the Allies signed an armistice, bringing an end to the war. George Ellison was killed just 90 minutes before peace was declared, thus giving him the unfortunate distinction of being the last British soldier killed in the war. 

These two graves face each other, although this was done completely unintentionally as nobody was aware of their “first” and “last” positions when they were buried.

3. Death at Hoover Dam

The Hoover Dam was one of the greatest, most ambitious engineering projects of its day, but it came with a heavy price as a lot of people died during construction. 

Exactly how many is a matter of debate. Officially, the death toll was 96, but historians argue that the real number would be much higher because the official version didn’t take into account workers who died off-site of construction-related injuries or illnesses. An inquiry by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation increased the number to 213 deaths between 1921 and 1935.

The first fatality was a surveyor named John Gregory Tierney who drowned in the Colorado River on December 20, 1921, after he got caught in a flash flood. Technically, another worker named Harold Connelly died first, but his demise was completely unconnected with the project as he drowned in the river when he went swimming.

Here is the truly tragic part – the last fatality registered during construction of the Hoover Dam occurred on December 20, 1935, exactly 14 years to the day after Tierney drowned, when a 25-year-old electrician’s helper plummeted 320 feet from one of the intake towers. That man was Patrick Tierney, the surveyor’s son.

2. The King and His Double

Some say that we all have a doppelganger somewhere in the world, a person who isn’t related to us in any way but they look just like us. King Umberto I of Italy found his doppelganger in 1900 when he went to eat at a little restaurant in Monza. He discovered that the proprietor looked almost exactly like him but, more than that, they had been born on the same day.

At this point, you would think this was more a case of twins separated at birth, but the coincidences did not stop there. Both men had married women named Margherita and had sons named Vittorio. Moreover, the restaurant owner had opened his establishment the day of King Umberto’s coronation.

Shocked to his core by these revelations, the king invited his doppelganger or long-lost twin to an event taking place the next day. Sadly, neither one made it. The next morning, the restaurateur was killed under unexplained conditions. Just hours later, when King Umberto found out about his demise, he was assassinated by an anarchist named Gaetano Bresci. 

1. The Writer and the Comet

The life of American writer Mark Twain has been inexorably linked to the passing of Halley’s Comet from beginning to end.

This famous comet visits us every 75 to 76 years. It will next be visible in 2061, but a noteworthy appearance happened in November 1835. Just two weeks after its perihelion (meaning the point of its orbit which is closest to the Sun), Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri. He would go on to adopt the pen name Mark Twain and become America’s most celebrated author.

Throughout his life, Twain took a keen interest in science and he was well-aware of his connection to Halley’s Comet. In the early 20th century, the writer was getting on in years and knew that the end was near. However, he also knew that the comet was due to pass by Earth again soon, and he was convinced that he would not die before that happened. As he put it: “Now there are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.” 

He could not have been more right. Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910, just one day after Halley’s Comet reached its perihelion.

The human mind likes to make sense of things. We look for patterns and order in everything, even if it’s not really there. Few things spark our interest in finding meaning more than when we stumble upon a coincidence. Many people believe they have to mean something. And whether or not these amazing coincidences are indicative of something supernatural or just bad luck doesn’t really matter, they’re all still pretty creepy.

10. The Baby Catcher

About 4,000 children per year under 10 are injured by falling from windows. That seems like a lot, all things considered. And it may be at the root of explaining the curious coincidence that befell Joseph Figlock back in 1938. According to reports, Figlock was a street sweeper in Detroit. He was walking down the street one day when a baby fell from somewhere above him in the building he was passing. The child landed on Figlock and injured both of them, but they both survived as a result.

A year later, Figlock was cleaning out an alley and a two-year-old fell from a fourth story window, once again landing on Figlock. The results were the same as before, with Figlock cushioning the falls enough that the child survived. 

You may see this story retold with embellished details, such as the same baby landing on Figlock exactly one year later, and he caught it both times. The original reports didn’t include those details at all and, in fact, point out that one baby was a girl and the other was a boy.

9. Booth’s Brother Saved Lincoln’s Son

People love to share eerie coincidences about Abraham Lincoln, whether or not they’re always true. But there are some quirky facts about the president’s life that do make you want to scratch your head, including the very odd coincidence about his son’s near-death experience. 

Everyone knows that Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Less well known is how Edwin Booth, brother of John, saved the life of Robert Todd Lincoln. Like his brother, Edwin was an actor as well. Unlike his brother, he was actually a big fan of Lincoln and the Union.

It was during the Civil War when Edwin and Robert met by chance in New Jersey. Neither knew the other personally, of course, and Robert was on a break from college while Edwin was traveling to see a friend. 

Robert was knocked off a train platform and fell down next to the train, which had started moving. Trapped, Robert suddenly felt someone grab him and yank him back up. He recognized Edwin Booth as being an actor, though Booth didn’t know who Lincoln was. It was only a year or two later when John Wilkes Booth assassinated the president.

8 . The Life and Death of George Story

George Story became famous from birth thanks to Life magazine. On November 23, 1936, the first issue of Life hit the stands. Inside that first issue, the very first photo was of a doctor delivering a baby. The caption read “Life begins” which was a clever bit of wordplay for the magazine title. The baby was George Story.

Throughout the years, Life would check in on George and run that photo again. The man himself grew up to be a journalist for some years. Life magazine stopped publishing in the year 2000. For their farewell issue, they were going to include one final photo of George with the caption “A Life ends.” Two days before the photographers showed up to take the final photos, Story passed away from congestive heart failure. 

7. The Nebraska Church Explosion

Choir practice at the West Side Baptist Church was scheduled to begin at 7:20 p.m. on Wednesday, March 1, 1950. It always started at that time, so this was by no means an unusual event. What was unusual was that, at 7:25, the church exploded. It’s been suggested that, after the furnace was lit in preparation for the choir’s arrival, a gas leak may have caused the blast. It was powerful enough to blow the windows out of nearby buildings and even knock the local radio station off the air. And not a single person was hurt because no one was there.

Every single member of the choir was late that night. Every single one was late for a different reason. Reverend Klempel, who lit the furnace, went home after to have dinner but ran late when his daughter’s dress got dirty and his wife was ironing a clean one.

The church pianist fell asleep at home after her own dinner and woke up at 7:15. A highschool student was stuck on a geometry problem with her homework. Two other members couldn’t get their cars started. One man was stuck writing a letter, and another was helping her mother. In total, 15 different people were late for 15 different reasons, such that no one was in the church when it eventually blew. 

6. The Deaths of Bruce and Brandon Lee

Bruce Lee died in 1973 while filming his fifth movie, Game of Death. His death was caused by a cerebral edema in his brain and was all but unpredictable. He left behind a wife and two children. One of those children, Brandon Lee, famously followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming an actor. As most of us know, Brandon Lee tragically died as well on the set of his film The Crow 20 years later in 1993. 

The Crow was Brandon’s fifth film. His death was caused by a prop gun that was improperly prepared for use. The dummy rounds were made from altered live rounds and one of the dummy bullets was still in the chamber when the blank was fired, causing it to fire like a normal gun. 

In what turned out to be a bizarre coincidence, a scenario that almost exactly mirrored this turn of events happens on screen in Game of Death. In the film, Bruce Lee is playing an actor. On the set of the movie he’s starring in, the prop guy explains to the cast and crew how to properly fire the prop gun. He explains that the gun is loaded with blanks but that they must only aim upwards because there’s a wad of paper that could come out and injure someone. If the actor on the set of The Crow had followed those instructions, Lee would have survived.

In his movie, Bruce Lee’s character is then shot by the prop gun, though the character shooting intentionally swapped out the dummy round for a real bullet. The similarity between what happened on screen and what his son endured 20 years later was eerily prophetic. 

5. The Death of Stephen Hawking

Ask the average person to name the greatest physicists of all time and they’ll likely only come up with a handful of names. Let’s be honest, science isn’t super glamorous and fame isn’t typically one of the perks, anyway. But that doesn’t mean some of them don’t achieve it. People like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking are at the top of the list. And while their scientific minds likely wouldn’t give much credence to weird coincidences, the rest of us can still do it.

Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, and passed away on March 14, 2018. He was born on the 300th anniversary of famed astronomer Galileo Galilei’s death. He died on the 139th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s birth. And it was also Pi Day, the day to commemorate the mathematical constant of Pi, which is often abbreviated down to 3.14, or March 14.

As you can imagine, social media made no end of clever quips about the timing of Hawking’s death, but even if it had no greater meaning related to relativity and time, it was still a hell of a coincidence. 

4 The Tierney Men

A lot of sons follow in the footsteps of their fathers. That’s usually a good thing. Not so for the Tierney family, however, who endured generational tragedy at the Hoover Dam.

By the time the Hoover Dam was finished, 96 fatalities had been recorded. One of those deaths occurred on December 20, 1921. John Gregory Tierney was caught in a flood and drowned in the Colorado River. Tierney left behind a family, which included his young son Patrick.

Fourteen years after his father died. Patrick Tierney was a young man and had taken up work at the site of his father’s death. It was December 20, the anniversary of his father’s death, when Patrick slipped from an intake tower. His death would be the final one associated with the building of the dam. 

3. My Way Killings

Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” spent 75 weeks as a Top 40 hit, and another 49 weeks in the top 75. The song was arguably Sinatra’s biggest and most memorable hit ever and is still popular to this day. Maybe even too popular, at least in the Philippines. Bad things happen to people who sing it there. 

Between the years 2002 and 2012, upwards of a dozen people were killed in connection to “My Way.” In the Philippines, karaoke is both very popular and very serious. Serious enough that at least one of those 12 people was killed for singing the song out of tune. It was reported at that time that the song had already been taken off of numerous play lists because violence kept breaking out when people sang it poorly.

Another victim was stabbed in 2018 when a fight broke out before the song even started. In another incident, a four-year-old was singing the song, adults started arguing, and one man attacked with a meat cleaver. The only common theme is the choice of song, it seems, making it quite a deadly coincidence with little reason for the deadly acts beyond the arrogant lyrics, making people angry. 

2. The Taxi Brothers

Many stories of amazing coincidences are too good to be true. Do some digging and they fall apart. But one popular tale of two brothers killed a year apart by the same taxi driver carrying the same passenger may actually be the real deal. 

The incident supposedly took place in Bermuda in 1975, so records are a bit hard to come by. But internet sleuths wanting to get to the bottom of the story have dug around to find the clues. A story from the Telegraph in 1975 does present the incident as fact. Both brothers were 17 at the time of their death, both riding the same scooter on the same road, one year apart. Other reports mention the name of the taxi driver and even the sections of road on which the boys were hit. 

Though verifiable details are hard to come by, a 1974 newsletter from a Bermuda worker’s union does offer a small message of sympathy after the death of a 17-year-old with the same name from the original story, which gives the whole thing a lot of credence. 

1. Umberto and Umberto

In The Prince and the Pauper, Mark Twain created a tale of two identical men who swap places. One royalty, the other a poor commoner. Sounds fantastical and implausible, which makes the story of King Umberto of Italy and Umberto the restaurateur so unbelievable. 

According to the story, the King went to a restaurant to have a meal. The owner wanted to meet the king, and the men were stunned to notice they looked exactly alike. They shared the same name and the same birthday. Both married women named Margherita on the same day. 

The day after their meeting, King Umberto was assassinated. He was shot four times. The two men were scheduled to meet again that day, but it never panned out. Umberto, the restaurant owner, had died that morning after also being shot. 

If the story is true, it’s quite the coincidence indeed. The two men very well could have been twin brothers without knowing it. But the death of a random restaurant owner in the year 1900 did not cause many waves, especially on the same day the king was assassinated, so details of his life, if he even existed, have been lost.

By definition a coincidence is something that is remarkable involving two or more unrelated things that still happens at the same time or in a way that seems to relate the two. One of the key features of a coincidence is the fact that the things or events are, in fact, unrelated. But over time we’ve come to doubt the very idea of a coincidence. People will remark “isn’t that a coincidence?” in a knowing way that suggests they don’t think it’s a coincidence at all, and conspiracies abound that many coincidences must therefore be the exact opposite. But despite that, the world is still rife with true coincidence, things that seem like they have to be related somehow and just aren’t. 

10. Freddie King, Albert King and B.B. King Were all Blues “Kings” But Unrelated 

If you’re a fan of the Blues or even just good guitar playing in general, then you probably know B.B. King who was also known by the nickname King of the Blues Guitar. It’s a clever name with a dual meaning thanks to King’s name and the fact that the man was just really good at playing the Blues. But he was also known by another name, or rather as part of another name, one of the three Kings of the Blues Guitar.

The Three Kings included B.B. King, Freddie King and Albert King. They were all born within about a decade of one another and rose to fame in the 50s and 60s together, their careers overlapping for many years. All three men rose to prominence as incredible musicians, in particular for playing Blues guitar, and it was sheer coincidence that all three were named King and they were unrelated. 

9. Robyn, Robin S, and Robin Schulz all Have Songs Called “Show Me Love”

“Show Me Love” may not be the most creative sounding name for a song ever, but it certainly captured the imagination of more than one artist. By coincidence, it seemed to capture the imagination of three artists who all had basically the same name. American R&B singer Robin S. was first to release a “Show Me Love“ back in 1993. 

Swedish singer Robyn released her “Show Me Love“ in 1997, which went on to create confusion as both were popular ’90s dance hits. Robin Schulz waited until 2015 to release his own “Show Me Love“ which was, once again, a dance hit — though it didn’t get as popular as the first two. It’s still made trying to Google one specific song difficult in the present if you aren’t sure who sang what.

8. Denmark Keeps Electing Prime Ministers Named Rasmussen

What’s in a name? If you’re a Danish politician, maybe more than you’d think if you don’t believe in coincidence. But if you do, then it’s still interesting to note that Danes apparently have a real affinity for the name Rasmussen. As in they elected three Prime Ministers in a row who were all named Rasmussen, even though they were unrelated. They liked the last one so much they elected him again a few years later after taking a four-year break for someone named Thorning-Schmidt. 

The Reign of Rasmussen began in 1993 when Poul Nyrup Rasmussen was elected. In 2001, he was replaced by Anders Rasmussen who served until 2009 when he resigned from office. That was when Lars Løkke Rasmussen took over. He only got two years in office but the people of Denmark were willing to give him another go when he was reelected in 2015 and stayed in office until 2019. 

7. The Word for Dog in the Mbabaram Language is Also Dog

Language is one of the most fascinating parts of human development and when you look back through the history of language, it just gets more and more fascinating. You can pick any random word in English and trace its etymology, perhaps to French or German or Old English and Latin and so on, back through centuries. But where did it start? When did the first person to ever name an apple call it whatever they called and why? How? 

The creation of language out of literally nothing will not be a thing we can ever fully understand in the present, but we can at least appreciate some remarkable coincidences that can occur across languages that have nothing in common and could have nothing in common over their development. One of the most amazing coincidences comes to us in the form of the word dog.

The etymology of dog in English gives us a dead end when we go back far enough. You can go back to Old English, around 1,000 years ago, and then the trail runs dry. But, remarkably, the same word appears in the Mbabaram language, one of the rarest languages in the world that was spoken by native Australians.  

Mbabaram had no ties to English whatsoever and evolved entirely separately with no influence. Somewhat more remarkable was how linguists traced the evolution of dog in that language from the earlier word gudaga which saw some mild phonetic changes over time to produce what they called a one in a million accidental similarity of form and meaning. 

6. The Caduceus and the Rod of Asclepius Looks Similar by Coincidence

In the medical community you can commonly find two symbols used by organizations as part of their official logos. One is the Caduceus, a staff encircled by two snakes with a pair of wings on top. The other is the Staff of Aesculapius, a staff with a single snake winding around it to the top.

You’ll see both symbols on medical ID bracelets but the Staff is the official symbol of organizations like MedicAlert, the American Medical Association, Yale School of Medicine and more. The Caduceus, on the other hand, is the official symbol of the Surgeon General of the US Army and the US Army Medical Corps. It’s used by the Public Health Service and numerous medical businesses as well. So what’s the difference?

The Staff of Aesculapius has been a symbol of medicine for years. Aesculapius was a god of healing. But the Caduceus is associated with Hermes, a messenger god who had nothing to do with medicine. The image, however, is more balanced with the wings and snakes and therefore more aesthetically pleasing. For that reason, since it looks sort of like the other symbol, it seems to have enjoyed widespread use as a result entirely by coincidence. It looks like the real symbol for medicine and healing, so it replaced the real symbol in many places. 

5. Australia and America Both Have a Store Chain Called Target with a Bullseye Logo 

Target, with its red bullseye logo, is one of the most popular retailers in America and reported over $100 billion in revenue for 2022. Suffice it to say, the chain is doing okay. But on the other side of the world there’s another chain of stores in Australia also called Target that also feature the exact same red bullseye logo that has nothing at all to do with the American stores. The goods sold are also similar, with the Australian version selling clothes, toys, electronics and so on but no food.

Target Australia is not owned by Kmart, contrary to rumors, but by a company called Westfarmers Limited. They filed their own copyright claim on the name and logo in Australia in 1968, a year after the American company did the same thing in America, neither company really having any idea that the other existed. The name and logo similarities are entirely coincidental and, if you think about it, using a bullseye as a logo for a store called Target is pretty much a no-brainer, so it’s not hard to imagine. 

Though the copyright in Australia came a year later than the US store, the original stores, known as Lindsay’s, actually date all the way back to 1926 making the Aussie version much older than the American one. 

4. There’s a UK Dennis the Menace Which Debuted on the Exact Same Day as the US Dennis the Menace 

In the age of social media you’ll see a lot of accusations of plagiarism if someone posts a joke online and then someone else posts the same joke sometime later. But the fact is that this kind of simultaneous discovery or synchronicity of thought is not unheard of and can get remarkably complex. One of the best examples of this is arguably Dennis the Menace, which was created in both the US and the UK at the exact same time, each with no knowledge of the other. 

Dennis the Menace appeared in comics on March 12, 1951 in both the UK and the US. The UK version appeared as a strip in a comic book and was created by David Law. The US version appeared in newspaper comic strips and was created by Hank Ketcham. Neither man knew the other, neither man had any idea that the other comic existed. Also, aside from the name, they aren’t all that similar.

The UK Dennis was much more of a Menace that his US counterpart, who was more of a pest than another else. When the two creators learned what was happening they seem to have mostly shrugged it off and agreed to keep doing what they were doing, acknowledging that the other was not a ripoff. That said,the UK version did end up being known as Dennis and Gnasher. When the Dennis the Menace movie was released in the UK, they just called it Dennis. 

3. Two Postal Workers in Two Different States Shot Up Their Workplaces on the Same Day

There was a time when the saying “going postal” had a very clear meaning for most people – it meant going on a rampage. It had become a sort of morbid joke that postal workers were inclined to grab a gun and shoot up their coworkers as a result of a series of shootings that started in the mid-80s and claimed the lives of dozens of people. 

The postal shootings became so ubiquitous for a time that, on May 6, 1993, it actually happened twice, in two different states, in totally separate and unrelated incidents. One shooting took place in Michigan while the other took place in California and three people died as a result while several others were injured. 

2. Anise, Star Anise, Fennel, and Licorice Unrelated

If you like black licorice there’s a good chance you also enjoy anise and star anise as they all have very similar flavors. You can lump fennel into that group too as it also has a subtle licorice flavor. But despite the similarity, and especially when it comes to anise and star anise which are obviously very closely related at least in terms of names, none of these things are actually biologically related.

The flavor similarity comes from an oil called anethole. You can also find it in licorice root and in fennel. All four have the same flavor as a result even though the plants are not closely related in the biological sense of the word. Anise is actually more closely related to parsley and celery while licorice is from the legume family.

1. Agatha Christie Was Investigated By MI5 Over a Coincidental Name

Imagine being such a good writer of mysteries that you actually just start echoing reality with the stories you make up, completely unintentionally and in a way that makes the government investigate you because you’ve convinced them you’re a spy. That’s what happened to Agatha Christie. In her book “N or M,” Christie created a character named Bletchley, who knew some military secrets.

MI5 had an issue with this because Christie was friends with someone named Dilly Knox who happened to be a code breaker at a secret facility in a place called Bletchley Park. Knox had helped break the Enigma codes and his work was informing the movement of British spies. So they had to find out if Christie somehow had learned this info. 

When Knox tried to stealthily inquire about why she named the character with secret info Bletchley, she explained it was because she was stuck in Bletchley waiting for a train and hated it so much she named her least likable character after the place. It was merely a coincidence in the end.