Amazing Coincidences In History

Two Finnish Brothers

This one is strange no matter what way one looks at it. In 2002 a pair of 70-year-old identical twin brothers from Raahe, Finland were hit and killed by trucks while riding their bicycles in a snowstorm. The catch? They were killed in separate accidents on the same day along the same stretch of road only about a mile apart. Additionally, as the second accident occurred just two hours after the first, the second brother hadn’t even learned that his brother had been killed earlier (thereby eliminating suicide as a possible explanation) and making this truly one for the record books. Of course, unusual coincidences between identical twins are not unheard of; there are dozens of cases on record of twins separated at birth reuniting years later to discover they possess similar mannerisms, food preferences, work at similar jobs, etc. and, in one case, even married and divorced spouses with the same name, and then remarried another person also with the same name! So why not die the same way, on the same day, on the same road?

 Double Homicide – 157 Years Apart

In a somewhat grisly coincidence, it seems that two women, Barbara Forrest and Mary Ashford, were both victims of a similar crime committed in the tiny village of Erdington, some five miles outside of Birmingham in England. Both twenty-year olds—who happened to share the same birthday—had been raped and strangled, their bodies were found 300 yards apart, and both had been found on the same day—May 27th—157 years apart (1817 and 1974)! Even more remarkable, both had just visited a friend that evening, both had changed into a new dress that night, and both had gone to a dance (where they presumably met their killer). Still not remarkable enough for you? How about the fact that the man accused in both their crimes was named Thornton, and that both Thornton’s were eventually acquitted for the crime? Reincarnation? Coincidence? Who knows?

The Saga of the Mark Chapmans

In 1980, Beatles singer, songwriter, and guitarist John Lennon was shot and killed by an obsessed fan in front of the Dakota Apartment Complex in New York City. His assassin was a man named Mark Chapman, a schizophrenic night security guard and general loser, who has been cooling his heels ever since in Attica Prison in upstate New York.Five years later, NBC decided to make a biography about Lennon and his wife, entitled John and Yoko: A Love Story. Unfortunately, the actor they hired to play Lennon, unbeknownst to them, happened to be named Mark Chapman, making for one of those “you gotta be kidding me” moments Hollywood occasionally suffers from. After realizing the fact, the studio quickly gave the part to someone who was not named Mark Chapman. However, Mark Chapman (not the crazy gunman) got rewards by starring Lennon in a 2007 dud called Chapter 27.

Titanic vs. the Titan

In what has to be considered one of the truly spooky coincidences of all time, in 1898 author Morgan Robertson (1861-1915) wrote a novella entitled Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan in which he outlined the voyage of a British luxury liner, HMS Titan, that hits an iceberg while crossing the northern Atlantic and sinks with a large loss of life—in part, due to the lack of sufficient lifeboats on-board. Fourteen years later, in real life, the Titanic hits an iceberg while crossing the Atlantic and sinks. Both the fictional Titan and the real Titanic were triple-screw luxury ships about 800 feet long that hit an iceberg in the month of April while traveling at around 25 knots, resulting in the death of some 2500 souls. Sometimes strange coincidences do happen but that doesn’t make them paranormal.