A frequently reported fact as an example of how the lives of two persons can follow synchronous trajectories — or how sometimes a simple cluster of coincidences gives food for thought — is the comparison of the biographies of US presidents Abraham Lincoln and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. These reports can be found for example in http://ohistoriador.wordpress.com/2010/02/17/lincoln-e-kennedy-a-maior-coincidencia-da-historia/ or at http://info.abril.com/news/network/gestao20/management/process-methodologies-and-cerebro-human/. Some of these articles use this example to confirm the existence of synchronicity, others to detract from it. I will not give here my opinion about it, because, in this case, I don’t know how much is true and how much is myth (I confess that I haven’t researched about).

In any case, the facts are as follows:

• both presidents were committed to civil rights;
• the two presidents had seven letters in their last names;
• Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846; Kennedy, in 1946;
• Lincoln was elected US president in 1860; Kennedy, in 1960;
• the wives of both lost children while living in the White House;
• both were assassinated on a Friday, with shots to the head and in the presence of their wives;
• the last name of Lincoln’s secretary was Kennedy, that of Kennedy’s secretary was Lincoln;
• both were killed by Southerners;
• John Wilkes Booth, who murdered Lincoln, was born in 1839; Lee Harvey Oswald, who murdered Kennedy, was born in 1939;
• both assassins had three names (and were known by the three names, unusual practice in the US), with 15 letters in each full name;
• both assassins were killed before their judgement;
• Lincoln was shot in the Ford room of a theatre named Kennedy; Kennedy was shot in a car of the Ford brand, model Lincoln;
• Lincoln was shot in a theatre, and after the crime, his killer hid in a warehouse; Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin hid in a theatre;
• Lincoln was succeeded by a Southerner named Johnson;
• Kennedy was succeeded by a Southerner named Johnson;
• both successors were vice-presidents of the Democratic Party, Southerners and former senators called Johnson (Andrew and Lyndon) with 13 letters in their names; Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808, and Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908;
• a week before he died, Lincoln was in the city of Monroe, in Maryland; the ironic thing here is that Kennedy had had a noisy affair with actress Marilyn Monroe (some conspiracy theories attribute Marilyn’s death to a kind of “file burning” by her relationship with Kennedy). Therefore, the joke is that Lincoln was in Monroe, Maryland, and Kennedy was in Monroe, Marilyn.

Here are some more quite suspicious (or picturesque) coincidences, taken from http://revistaplatina.com/section-blog/84-curiosidades?start=15/.

James Dean’s car curse

In September 1955, James Dean died in a car accident, driving a Porsche. After that, they say the car started to bring “bad luck”. When the car was towed from the accident site and taken to a garage, the engine slipped and fell on the mechanic, shattering both of his legs. Later the engine was bought by a doctor who put him in his race car and died soon after a race started. The same happened to another racer in the same race; his car was using the drive shaft of Dean’s car.

The garage where the Porsche was repaired was subsequently destroyed by fire. Later the car was displayed in Sacramento (USA), but fell off the frame where it was and broke the hip of a teenager.

In Oregon, the trailer where the car was displayed slid from where it was trapped and destroyed the front of a shop. Finally, in 1959, the car mysteriously broke into eleven pieces while suspended on a steel support.

Baby is saved twice by the same man

In Detroit in the 1930s, a young (and incredibly careless) mother should have been eternally grateful to a man named Joseph Figlock. The woman’s baby, who was falling through a tall window, was saved in the air by Joseph and both came out unscathed. A stroke of luck alone. But a year later the same baby fell from exactly the same window on the same man as he ran down the street. Again both survived the event. [Report extracted from Mysteries of the Unexplained.]

A bullet hits its target years later

Henry Ziegland thought he had dodged the bullet. In 1883, his girlfriend took his own life after he ended the relationship. The girl’s brother, enraged, chased Henry and shot him. Believing that had reaped Henry, the boy pointed the gun at his own head and took his own life. But Henry had not died because the bullet had only grazed his face and lodged in a large tree. Surely he thought he was a lucky man.

Years later, Henry decided to cut down the large tree, which still had the bullet in it. The task seemed so formidable that he decided to blow it up with a few sticks of dynamite. The explosion propelled the bullet exactly to Henry’s head, who this time did not escape. [Excerpted from Ripley’s Believe It or Not!]

Twin boys, twin lives

The stories of identical twins with almost identical lives are often amazing, but perhaps none is as unique as these identical twins born in Ohio (USA).

The twins were separated at birth and adopted by different families. Unbeknownst to each other, both families named the boys James. Coincidences just begun. Both James grew up not even knowing each other, yet both received police training, both had abilities in mechanical drawing and carpentry, and each of them married a woman named Linda. They called their sons James Alan and James Allan. Both also divorced their wives and married other women, both named Betty. Both had dogs called Toy. In addition, they had cars and smoked cigarettes of the same brand. Both vacationed on the same beach in Florida, suffered from migraines and had a habit of biting their fingernails.

Forty years after his premature separation they were gathered. [Excerpted from Reader’s Digest, January 1980.]

Just as in the book

In the 19^th century, the famous horror writer Edgar Allan Poe wrote a book called The story of Arthur Gordon Pym. It was about shipwrecked survivors who were many days in an open boat before deciding to “shoot down” and eat the cabin boy, whose name was Richard Parker.

Forty-six years later, in 1884, a vessel called Mignonette sank leaving only four survivors, who were in an open boat for many days. A few days passed and the three most experienced team members did the same as the characters in that book: they ate the cabin boy, also named Richard Parker.

Just as in the book (2)

In 1898, American science fiction author Morgan Robertson published in London the novel Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan. Starting with the title, the book describes the way of life of the elite of the time, in which the rich had personal servants, men wore tails in sumptuous dinners and women travelled with chests full of jewels and clothes. Robertson tells the story of the maiden voyage of the largest ocean liner ever built, considered unsinkable and which, on a cold April night, collides with an iceberg and sinks.

Few passengers can be saved because there were insufficient lifeboats, only 24.

The name of the giant ship? Titan. She measured 240 metres, weighed 70,000 tons, bore three thousand passengers and sank in April.

After 14 years of publication of the book, the Titanic sinks, and: there were only 20 lifeboats; the Titanic had 271 metres, 60,000 tons and carried 2,228 passengers. The two had three propellers. Both had the same sinking in the same locality and in the same month: April.

Months after the sinking of the Titanic, a steamship was travelling through the foggy Atlantic with only a young boy waking. He remembered that they were in the same stops where the Titanic had sunk and was suddenly terrified by coincidence, as the name of the ship he was in was Titanian. Because of his horror, he sounded the alarm and the ship stopped just in time: a huge iceberg appeared from the mist directly on her way. The Titanian had been saved.

Twins die in separate accidents on the same road, two hours apart

In 2002, twin brothers died in separate accidents with a few hours apart on the same road in Finland. The first of the twins died after being hit by a lorry while riding his bicycle. He died just one mile from the spot where his brother had died. “This is simply a historic coincidence. Although the road is quite busy, accidents do not occur every day”, said police Maria-Leena Huhtala to Reuters. “I kept my hair stand on end when I heard the two were brothers, identical twins…”, she said. [Source: BBC News]

Bizarre poker

In 1858, Robert Fallon was killed in an act of revenge of his poker partners who claimed that he had won 600 dollars cheating. With Fallon’s seat empty and anyone interested in picking up the 600 dollars considered “cursed”, they found another gambler to take his place and gave him the dead man’s money to use it in the gamble.

When police arrived to investigate the incident, the new gambler had turned the 600 dollars in $ 2,200 in winnings. The police demanded that the original 600 dollars be passed to Fallon’s heirs — only to find out that the new gambler was Fallon’s son, who had not seen his father for seven years. [Excerpted from Ripley’s Giant Book of Believe It or Not!]

The king Umberto I look-alike

In Monza, Italy, King Umberto I went to a small restaurant for dinner, accompanied by his assistant, General Emilio Ponzia-Vaglia. When the restaurant owner took the king’s request, he noted that both, the king and the owner, were almost doubles in both face and physically. Both started talking about their amazing similarities with each other and found that both were born on the same day of the same year (14^th March 1844) in the same city; both married women named Margherita. On the same day of the coronation of the king as ruler of Italy, the other man had opened his restaurant. On 29^th July 1900, the king was informed that the other man had died in a mysterious shooting. When he was publicly expressing his regret, he was killed by an anarchist in the crowd.

And to finish in a relaxed way: