Some Spooky Coincidences?

[timmy]

1. He wasn't kidding. On June 20, 1940, Soviet archaeologists uncovered the tomb of Tamerlane, a descendent of Genghis Khan. A warning inscription read "Whoever opens my tomb will unleash an invader more terrible than I." They opened it anyway. Germany invaded the Soviet Union two days later.

[timmy]

2. Musical neighbours. If not for the 200-year difference, Jimi Hendrix and George Handel would have been neighbours. They lived at 23 and 25 Brook Street, respectively, in London.

[timmy]

3. We wonder what their insurance was like. There were only two cars in the state of Ohio in 1895. They ran into each other. Then there were no cars.

[timmy]

4. Maybe there's something in the water. Stalin, Hitler, and Franz Josef, who are collectively responsible for about 80 million deaths, all lived in Vienna at the same time.

[timmy]

 

 

5. Twins Separated at Birth Who Had Incredibly Similar Lives. Man, twins are weird! Separated at birth, a set of twins from Ohio each grew up knowing nothing of the other's existence. They were both named James on their adoptions (which might be a weirder coincidence of their respective families), both grew up to be police officers and marry women named Linda. They each had a son, one named James Alan and one named James Allan. They also each had a dog named Toy. They both got divorced, but later each remarried women named Betty.

[timmy]

 

6. The Hoover Dam's first and last victims. The first worker to die during the dam's construction was J.G. Tierny on December 20, 1922. The last person to die there was J.G. Tierny's son, who died on December 20, 1935.

[timmy]

 

7. History repeats itself. Hitler was born 129 years after Napoleon. He also came to power 129 years after Napoleon, invaded Russia 129 years after Napoleon, and was defeated 129 years after Napoleon.

[timmy]

8. The license plate that signaled more than anyone thought. The license plate number of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's car, in which he was assassinated, was A III118. The official end of WWI was Armistice Day, 11/11/18

[timmy]

9. Don't bring her on a cruise. Violet Jessup was like a walking bad omen. She was on the HMS Olympic when it struck the HMS Hawke, she was on the HMHS Britannic when it hit a mine, and of course she was on the RMS Titanic, too. Jessup was actually a stewardess and nurse, so being on ships was her job. She'd be later known as "Miss Unsinkable." All three doomed ships were also "sister" ships.

[timmy]

10. We assume they tip either time. 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.

[timmy]

11. A giant mess of disguised ships. 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.

[timmy]

12. You guys really need to keep the baby away from the window. Someone on this street obviously had it in for this baby, because during the 1930s, a man named Joseph Figlock was surprised by a falling baby landing on his shoulders. The same day the next year, the same baby fell on him again at the same spot. Neither Figlock nor the baby were harmed, but we hope someone got this family a screen.

[timmy]

 

 

13. Mark Twain's comet-framed life. Halley's Comet passes Earth about once every 76 years, making it actually not that unlikely that someone's life could be measured by it. One such person is Mark Twain, who was born during its 1835 pass, and died the day of its appearance in 1910. He even predicted it in 1909.

[timmy]

14. An honest mistake. When designing the landscape scenes for video game Deus Ex, one of the artists left out a major landmak of the New York City Skyline: the Twin Towers. To cover the flub, the game made up something about a terrorist attack. This game was made in 2000.

[timmy]

15. The case for taking your own advice. South African astronomer Danie du Toit was giving a lecture at the age of 49 about how death could come at any time. On finishing, he popped a mint into his mouth with a little too much vigor, and choked to death.