Top 10 Weird Coincidences

The dictionary describes the word coincidence as a striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance. Could it be chance or could it be fate? Coincidences happen all the time to the most ordinary of people, but the following events are perhaps some of the strangest of them all. One can't deny the possibility that perhaps supernatural forces may have come into play here.

10. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, an 18th century German poet was riding on the road to Drusenheim. Riding toward him was someone who looked exactly like him, but but wearing a gray suit trimmed in gold. Eight years later, von Goethe was again traveling on the same road, but in the opposite direction. He then realized he was wearing the very gray suit trimmed in gold that he had seen his double wear eight years earlier.


9. While American novelist Anne Parrish was browsing bookstores in Paris in the 1920s, she came upon a book that was one of her childhood favorites entitled "Jack Frost and Other Stories." She immediately showed it to her husband, remarking that the story had been one of her favorites as a little girl. Her husband opened the book and was stunned to read the inscription inside: "Anne Parrish, 209 N. Weber Street, Colorado Springs, Colorado." As it turns out, the book was the one she had as a child.


8. In 1858, Robert Fallon was shot dead, an act of vengeance by those with whom he was playing poker. Fallon, they claimed, had won the $600 pot through cheating. With Fallon’s seat empty and none of the other players willing to take the now-unlucky $600, they found a new player to take Fallon’s place and staked him with the dead man’s $600. By the time the police had arrived to investigate the killing, the new player had turned the $600 into $2,200 in winnings. The police demanded the original $600 to pass on to Fallon’s next of kin - only to discover that the new player turned out to be Fallon’s son, who had not seen his father in seven years.


7. Mark Twain was a popular American author who wrote such books as the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain was born on the day of the appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1835, and died on the day of its next appearance in 1910. He himself predicted this in 1909, when he said: “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.”

6. Henry Ziegland thought he had dodged fate. In 1883, he broke off a relationship with his girlfriend who, out of distress, committed suicide. The girl’s brother was so enraged that he hunted down Ziegland and shot him. The brother, believing he had killed Ziegland, then turned his gun on himself and took his own life. But Ziegland had not been killed. The bullet, in fact, had only grazed his face and then lodged in a tree. Ziegland surely thought himself a lucky man. Some years later, however, Ziegland 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 into Ziegland’s head, killing him.

5. In 1975, while riding a moped in Bermuda, a man was accidentally struck and killed by a taxi. One year later, this man’s bother was killed in the very same way. In fact, he was riding the very same moped. And to stretch the odds even further, he was struck by the very same taxi driven by the same driver - and even carrying the very same passenger!

4. An article in the January, 1980 edition of Reader's Digest reported the strange lives of identical twin boys, separated at birth in Ohio, and adopted by different families. Forty years later the boys were reunited and discovered that their lives had been amazingly parallel. Both boys were named James. Both trained in law enforcement. Both had abilities in mechanical drawing and carpentry. They both married women named Linda, had sons named James Alan and James Allan, respectively. Both brothers later divorced and both remarried women named Betty. They both owned dogs named Toy.

3. In the 19th century, the famous horror writer, Egdar Allan Poe, wrote a book called ‘The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym’. It was about four survivors of a shipwreck who were in an open boat for many days before they decided to kill and eat the cabin boy whose name was Richard Parker. Some years later, in 1884, the yawl, Mignonette, foundered, with only four survivors, who were in an open boat for many days. Eventuality the three senior members of the crew, killed and ate the cabin boy. The name of the cabin boy was Richard Parker.


2. The lives of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, two of America’s founders. Jefferson crafted the Declaration of Independence, showing drafts of it to Adams, who (with Benjamin Franklin) helped to edit and hone it. The Continental Congress approved the document on July 4, 1776. Surprisingly, both Jefferson and Adams died on the same day, July 4, 1826 - exactly 50 years from the signing of the Declaration of Independence.


1. In Monza, Italy, King Umberto I, went to a small restaurant for dinner, accompanied by his aide-de-camp, General Emilio Ponzia-Vaglia. When the owner took King Umberto’s order, the King noticed that he and the restaurant owner were virtual doubles, in face and in build. Both men began discussing the striking resemblance between each other and found many more similarities. Both men were born in the same place, on the same day, of the same year, (March 14th, 1844; Turin, Italy). On the day that the king married Queen Margherita, the restaurant owner had married a lady named Margherita. The restaurateur opened his restaurant on the same day that King Umberto was crowned King of Italy. On the 29th July 1900, King Umberto was informed that the restaurateur had died that day in a mysterious shooting accident, and as he expressed his regret, an anarchist in the crowd then assassinated him.

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