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Famous Synchronicities
Eerie Coincidences
Strange But True Stories

Fact really is stranger than fiction. Albert Einstein said that coincidence is how God reveals himself. People of faith may want to consider the information we provide about the number 666—these things are disturbing but true and are easy enough to verify with a few Google searches, which we recommend doing ...

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and John Adams helped edit it. The Continental Congress formally adopted the document on July 4, 1776. Jefferson and Adams were the only signers of the document to become president. Jefferson and Adams both died on July 4, 1826 ... exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence!

The Titanic, Britannic and Olympic were sister ships of the White Star Line. Violet Jessop was traveling on the RMS Olympic when it collided with a warship, the HMS Hawke, in 1911. She was a stewardess and nurse on the RMS Titanic when it sank in 1912. She held the same positions on the HMHS Britannic when it sank in 1916. She survived all three disasters, continued to work at sea, and lived 60 years after the first shipwreck until passing away in 1971 at age 83. She earned the nickname "Unsinkable."

Morgan Robertson published Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan in 1898. In his book a massive cruise liner named Titan is called "unsinkable," has a shortage of lifeboats, collides with an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean, and sinks. Robertson's ship was nearly identical to the the Titanic in size and speed. Fourteen years later the Titanic hit an iceberg in the Atlantic and sank. Robertson also wrote Beyond the Spectrum about the Japanese launching a sneak attack on the United States, 27 years before the Pearl Harbor attack. And of course the atomic bomb was "beyond the spectrum."

Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, about four survivors of a shipwreck who were in an open boat for many days before they cast lots to see who would die, then ate a cabin boy named Richard Parker. Years later the yawl Mignonette foundered and four survivors were in an open boat for many days. Eventually they cast lots and three members of the crew killed and ate the cabin boy. The cabin boy's name was Richard Parker.

In June 1941, Joseph Stalin ordered a group of Soviet archeologists to open the tomb of Tamerlane the Great, a Mongol warlord descended from Genghis Khan. Tamerlane (Timur the Lame) was a ruthless invader whose conquests resulted in an estimated 17 million deaths (according to his Wikipedia page). When the Soviets opened Timur's tomb, according to some reports they discovered an inscription stating: "Whosoever opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I." (We do not claim to know if the part about the curse is true.) Stalin had Timur's remains shipped to Moscow. Two days later Hitler's armies invaded Russia and there were deaths estimated at much higher than 17 million. (Timur had allegedly said "more terrible.") In 1942, Stalin ordered Timur's remains returned and reburied with full Islamic honors and shortly thereafter the Germans surrendered at Stalingrad. Hitler had made the mistake of attacking Russia in the winter. Timur had made the same fatal mistake when he attacked China in the winter.

Napoleon was born in 1760; Hitler was born in 1889 (a difference of 129 years)
The French Revolution occurred in 1789; the German Revolution occurred in 1918 (a difference of 129 years)
Napoleon came to power in 1804; Hitler came to power in 1933 (a difference of 129 years)
Napoleon took Austria in 1809; Hitler took Austria in 1938 (a difference of 129 years)
Napoleon attacked Russia in 1812; Hitler attacked Russia in 1941 (a difference of 129 years)
Napoleon's Waterloo was in 1815; Hitler's D-Day was in 1944 (a difference of 129 years)
Napoleon lost the war in 1816; Hitler lost the war in 1945 (a difference of 129 years)
When the revolutions started when then were 29.
Both came to power when they were 44.
Both attacked Russia when they were 52.
Their critical defeats came when the were 55.
Both lost the war when they were 56.

The are a number of eerie parallels between the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy ...
The last name of Lincoln's secretary was Kennedy; the last name of Kennedy's secretary was Lincoln.
Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre; Kennedy was shot in a Ford-built limousine called a Lincoln.
Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and fled to a warehouse. Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to a theatre.
John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's murderer, was born 1839. Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's murderer, was born 1939.
Abraham Lincoln was elected to congress in 1846; John F. Kennedy was elected to congress in 1946.
Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860; John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960.
Both presidents were shot in the back of the head, on the Friday before a major holiday, while seated beside their wives, neither of whom were injured. 
Both were in the presence of another couple, and in each case that man was also wounded by the assassin.
After both assassinations there were claims that the fatal shot must have come from a different direction. 
Both were succeeded by vice-presidents named Johnson: Andrew born in 1808 and Lyndon in 1908, both of whom had 13 letters in their names.
Both assassins have fifteen letters in their names.
Both assassins were in their turn assassinated by shooters who used a Colt revolver and fired only one, fatal shot.
One year before Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, his brother, Edwin Booth, saved Lincoln's son after he had fallen in front of an oncoming train.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria led directly to World War I. The car the archduke was shot in had the license plate number "AIII118." World War I officially ended on Armistice Day: November 11, 1918 (11/11/18).

The graves of the first and last British soldiers killed in WWI face each other, a few feet apart. The placement was apparently not planned. 

During WWI, the British army turned a passenger ship, the RMS Carmania, into a battleship disguised as another passenger ship, the German SMS Trafalgar. Confused yet? It gets better. The disguised ship sank a German ship off Brazil in 1914. That ship was the real Trafalgar, which the Germans had disguised to look like the British Carmania.

The first worker to die during construction of the Hoover Dam was John Gregory Tierny, known as J.G., on December 20, 1921. The last worker to die was Tierny's son, Patrick William Tierny, who died exactly 14 years later on December 20, 1935.

Mark Twain was born on the first day in the year that Halley's Comet appeared in 1835. In 1909 he was quoted saying, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.” He died on the first day of the comet's reappearance in 1910.

When the actor Anthony Hopkins was researching his role in The Girl From Petrovka, he tried to find a copy of the George Feier novel. He had no luck until, by chance, he came across a book sitting on a bench. Hopkins opened it to discover that it wasn't just any copy. It was Feifer's personal, annotated copy which had been stolen from him!

The Lewis and Clark expedition needed horses to reach the Pacific Ocean. Negotiations with the Shoshone tribe weren’t going so well ... until Sacagawea realized the Chief of the Shoshone tribe was her long-lost brother, Cameahwait! They had been separated as children. The reunion was a happy one and the Shoshone provided the expedition with the horses it needed to continue.

In July 1900 the King of Italy, Umberto I, dined at a restaurant where he met a man who looked exactly like himself! Not only did they look alike, but they were both born on the same day of the same year, both men married women named Margherita on the same day, and the restaurant had opened on the same day that Umberto was crowned King! The next day Umberto was told that the restaurateur had been shot to death. He expressed condolences and then was assassinated by an anarchist.

Rome was said to have been founded by Romulus, hence the name Rome. The last emperor of Rome was named Romulus Augustus.

Male twins who were separated at birth and grew up without any knowledge of each other have led almost identical lives. They were both named James by their adoptive parents, worked as police officers and married women called Linda. They both later got divorced and remarried women called Betty. They also each had sons called James Allan and dogs named Toy!

In 1975, a man was killed when he was struck by a taxi in Bermuda. An unlucky passenger had to witness it. A year later, the same taxi driver was driving the same passenger when the taxi struck and killed the original victim's brother.

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