Best coincidences [Part-1]

 1

Mark Twain's birth and death coincide with Halley's Comet.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known more popularly by his nom de plume, Mark Twain, was born in 1835, the same year that Halley's Comet made its first appearance. The comet made a second appearance in 1910, the year that Twain died, and the author, according to the New York Times, famously predicted that the two events would coincide. He's quoted as saying, "The Almighty has said, no doubt, 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together."

2

Stephen Hawking shares his birth and death dates with Galileo and Einstein, respectively.

Theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author Stephen Hawking was famously born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo's death, and died on what would have been Einstein's 139th birthday. That said, the far more confounding question of statistical improbability surrounding Hawking's life was the fact that he survived to be 76 despite living with Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Though we know very little about the disease, according to Scientific American, most of those diagnosed live for about five years past diagnosis. Yet Hawking survived for more than five additional decades, allowing him to share his crucial insights and gifts with the world—not to mention his legendary humor.

3

Political adversaries Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died within hours of each other—on July 4th.

The relationship between former presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams took quite a few twists and turns over the years. They began as allies, then gradually grew into adversaries as their politics divided them. As the last two surviving members of the American revolutionaries from the British Empire, they eventually reconciled and corresponded by letter until their final years. They famously died within hours of one another on the same day in 1826: on the Fourth of July, no less.

4

A meteor hit the Commette family's home.

National Geographic reports that your odds of being killed by a meteor are 1 in 1,600,000. So the odds would seem infinitesimally small that a meteor—which had been flying through space for more than four-and-a-half billion years without hitting a target—would hit the home of a family with the last name "Commette." According to Time, in a bizarre case of cosmic synchronicity, that is exactly what happened to one family in France. Thankfully, no one was hurt, and the Commettes are now the proud owners of their own extremely rare extra-terrestrial rock.

5.Anthony Hopkins happened upon a signed copy of the book he was searching for in a train station.

In the early 1970s, Anthony Hopkins was slated to play Kostya in a film adaptation of The Girl from Petrovka. To prepare for the role, he set out to read the book, but was unable to find a copy in any book store despite a rigorous search. Then, as internet legend has it, while sitting in a London Tube station, he noticed a copy of that very book that someone had left behind. When he opened it, he found that the book had also been signed by its author, George Feifer.

6

John Wilkes Booth's brother saved Abraham Lincoln's son from death.

John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln reportedly had a coincidental family connection long before Booth shot Lincoln on that fateful day in April in 1865. Booth's brother, Edwin, was a somewhat famous stage actor who ardently supported the Union during the Civil War. While in a train station in New Jersey, Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, leaned up against a stopped train, nearly falling onto the tracks as it started up again. Edwin Booth grabbed him by the collar and saved him just in time. The younger Lincoln recognized his hero and wrote about the incident, but it wasn't until years later that Booth found out who he had saved.

7

And that same son of Lincoln's witnessed three presidential assassinations.

While it would be rare to be present for the death of any president, Robert Todd Lincoln was in some way present for not one, not two, but three presidential assassinations. Though he wasn't there at the theater during his father's fateful shooting, he was rushed to his deathbed and sat by his side until the elder Lincoln passed away. Later, he was an eye-witness to the killing of President James A. Garfield. Finally, in 1901, Lincoln was nearby in Buffalo, New York, at the invitation of President William McKinley, when the president was fatally shot.

8

An engaged coupled discovered their parents almost married one another.

As told in an episode of NPR's This American Life, titled "No Coincidence, No Story," Stephen and Helen Lee had just gotten engaged when they made a shocking family discovery. While looking through family photos during their engagement party in New York, they realized that the bride's mother and groom's late father had nearly gotten married in Korea in the 1960s, but moved onto other relationships because their parents disapproved. By incredibly narrow odds, the two loves of Lee's father's life—from two different sides of the world, no less—now share grandchildren decades later.

9

One woman survived the Titanic, Britannic, and Olympic shipwrecks.

Violet Jessop was a nurse and ocean liner stewardess who earned the nickname "Miss Unsinkable" by surviving both the accidents of the Titanic in 1912 and its sister ship, the HMHS Britannic, which met the same fate in 1916. Jessup was also reportedly on board a third boat, the RMS Olympic, when it hit a war ship—but fortunately, the Olympic stayed afloat.

10

The first and last battles of the Civil War were fought next to the same man's property—in different towns.

The Civil War broke out in 1861 with the First Battle of Bull Run. "Bull Run" references the name of a stream that wound its way through the farm of a 46-year-old grocer named Wilmer McLean in Manassas, Virginia. After the devastation of the battle, McLean left to find safety in a new home with his wife in Appomattox, Virginia, and, for roughly four years, he was indeed safe as the bloody war overtook the nation. In 1865, the war came to a close when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at the Appottomax Courthouse—just steps from McLean's new property.

11.The first and last soldiers killed in WWI are buried next to each other.

By the time World War I came to an end, it had claimed an estimated one million British lives. Yet somehow, without any planning, the first recorded English casualty of the war, 17-year-old soldier John Parr, and the last recorded casualty, 30-year-old George Edwin Ellison, reportedly have graves that face one another just 15 feet apart in the Saint Symphorien Military Cemetery.

12

One man missed two Malaysian Air flights that crashed.

In 2014, there were two tragic plane crashes involving Malaysian Air flights. The first was shot down over Ukraine, and the second disappeared without a trace somewhere over the Indian Ocean in the greatest aviation mystery of all time. Beyond the fact that both incidents involved the same airline in such a short time span, there was another striking coincidence: Dutch cyclist Maarten de Jonge was scheduled to take both flights, but cheated death by bumping his ticket at the eleventh hour, when cheaper options became available.

13

A father and son were the first and last casualties during the construction of the Hoover Dam—14 years apart.

According to the United States Bureau of Reclamation, out of the estimated 21,000 people that worked on the building of the Hoover Dam, there were 96 deaths on the job site. Among the first was J.G. Tierney, who drowned along with his colleague on December 20, 1922 while conducting a geological survey prior to construction. Fourteen years later, on the exact anniversary of ‎Tierney's death, the final death of the project was recorded. It was his son, Patrick Tierney, who, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, fell from an electrical tower.

14

A woman's husband found a dollar she wrote on, hoping to find a husband.

As told on an episode of NPR's This American Life, Esther and Paul Grachan had been seeing each other for a short time when Paul decided to ask her to be his girlfriend. That day, while paying for a sandwich, he noticed that a dollar bill he was about to hand the cashier had the name "Esther" written on it in pencil. How strange, he thought, that this should happen right when he was thinking about their relationship. He kept the bill and decided to frame it and give it to her as a gift. She was "speechless" when she saw it, but told him to ask her about it later.

Years passed, they got engaged and then married, and the framed dollar resurfaced in their home. Apparently, Esther had written her name on the dollar and a few others after a breakup, and said to herself at the time that she would marry the man that brought it back to her. She didn't tell him why she was so speechless because she thought bringing up marriage so soon in the relationship would scare him off. But she believed in that moment he was "the one."

15

10-Year-Old Laura Buxton released a red balloon—and another 10-year-old Laura Buxton found it.

In a story told on the WYNC podcast Radiolab, in 2001, a 10-year-old girl named Laura Buxton stood in her front yard with a red balloon. On the side of the balloon, she had written the words, "Please return to Laura Buxton," along with her address. She then released it into a strong wind.

The balloon traveled roughly 140 miles south before descending, and finally landed in the yard of another 10-year-old girl. The second girl's name? Also Laura Buxton! After getting in touch and explaining the coincidence, the girls decided to meet, and discovered a whole range of uncanny similarities. Not only did they look and dress alike, but both girls had three-year-old chocolate labs, a grey rabbit, and a guinea pig, and both had brought their guinea pigs to the meeting, unplanned.