Our first article on coincidences has been constantly in the top 10 most popular lists, so it seemed fitting to do a followup. Here are another 10 amazing coincidences!
10. Emergency Landing

In 1979, Das Besteran, a German Magazine, held a writing competition. Readers had to send in unusual stories based on real life occurrences. Walter Kellner from Munich won with his story about flying a Cessna 41 between Sardinia and Sicily. In his story he had engine trouble, landed in the water, and was later rescued. An Austrian man, also named Waltner Kellner, wrote to the paper and told them that the winner of the prize had plagiarized the story because virtually the same thing had happened to him. The magazine checked out both stories and found that they were both true, despite being nearly identical.
9. Lucky Number

In the 1930s in New York, a commuter train dove off an open drawbridge into Newark Bay killing 30 passengers. The newspaper published photographs of the incident and the number ’932′ could be seen clearly on the side of one of the coaches. A large number of people selected that number for the Manhattan numbers game and the number came up! Thousands of people won.
8. Bad Lightning

In 1899 a man was killed by a bolt of lightning as he stood in his backyard in Taranto, Italy. Thirty years later, his son was killed in the very same spot by another bolt of lightning. On October 8, 1949, Rolla Primarda, the second victim’s son (and grandson of the first victim) was also killed in the same spot by yet another bolt of lightning.
7. Patricide

Jean Marie Dubarry, a Frenchman, was executed on February 13, 1746 for the murder of his father. 100 years, to the day, another Frenchman also named Jean Marie Dubarry was executed… also for the murder of his father.
6. Coincidental Murder

On the 26th November, 1911, three men were hanged at Greenberry Hill in London after being convicted of the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey. The killers names were Robert Green, Henry Berry and Lawrence Hill (Green, Berry, and Hill).
5. Plum Pudding

19th century poet, Emile Deschamps, once said that when he was a schoolboy, he shared a table at a restaurant with M. de Fortgibu, who had recently returned from England with a taste for plum puddings, which were unavailable in France at that time. He insisted that Deschamps sample one.
Ten years later Deschamps passed a restaurant and saw that it was serving plum pudding, so Deschamps went in and ordered a slice, to be told that it was reserved for another customer. Deschamps went over to the customer to beg his favour and it turned out to be M. de Fortgibu, both men being astonished at meeting again after so long a time over the same dish.
Many years passed by, and Deschamps was invited to a dinner party which featured plum pudding. At the party Deschamps was telling his hosts about the extraordinary encounter with Fortgibu, the hosts joking about the possibility of the old man turning up when suddenly, there was Fortgibu again, who had also been invited to the party.
Deschamps said, “Three times in my life I have eaten plum pudding, and three times I have seen M. Fortgibu. My hair stood up on my head!”
4. Dueling Luck – or not

Henri Trange fought five duels in Marseilles, France, between the years of 1861 and 1878. The first four of his opponents died before any shots were fired. Just before any shots were fired in the fifth duel, Trange himself dropped dead.
3. Mysterious Murder Link

Barbara Forrest (Born 1954) and Mary Ashford (Born 1797) were both the victims of murder 157 years apart yet both instances have remarkable similarities. They were both found murdered on the same day, 27th May, in the same town, both in 1817 and 1974 the 26th of May was Whit Monday, they had both been raped before they were murdered, they were both found within 400 yards of each other, they were both murdered at about the same time of day, there were attempts to hide both bodies, both girls had visited a friend on the evening of Whit Monday, both changed into a new dress that night, and both went to a dance.
The man accused of each murder had the same name – Thornton, and both men were acquitted of murder, both girls have very similar facial features and 10 days before, 17th May 1974, Barbara Forrest said to a friend, “This is going to be my unlucky month. I just know it. Don’t ask me why.”
2. Lucky for Some

Oregon’s Columbian newspaper announced the winning Pick 4 lottery numbers for June 28, 2000 in advance. The newspaper had intended to print the previous set of winning numbers but erroneously printed those for the state of Virginia, namely 6-8-5-5. In the next Oregon lottery, those same numbers were drawn.
1. Rest in Peace

In Texas, USA, in 1899, Canadian actor Charles Francis Coghlan became ill and died whilst he was in Galveston. Because it was too far to return his remains to his home on Prince Edward Island, 3500 miles away, he was instead buried in a lead coffin inside a granite vault.
A year after his death, in September 1900, a hurricane hit Galveston, flooding the graveyard, shattering Charles Coghlan’s granite vault and carrying away his lead coffin out into the Gulf of Mexico.
In October 1908, eight years after the hurricane, fishermen on Prince Edward Island spotted a weathered box floating near the shore. It was the coffin of Charles Coghlan, which had finally returned home. He was buried in the nearby church where he had been christened as a baby.




















ONE!!!!!!!!
finnaly first one. good list.
Wow – you were fast
Coming up next on an all new Beyond Belief…I miss that show. They had some cool coincidences on several episodes.
Great list J, I love the ‘coincidence’ and ‘unsolved mysteries’ ones. Always something interesting in those.
#3 is waaay too wierd. I started thinking it’d be a copycat murder thing, but the things about visiting friends & going to dances were creepy.
GingerLee: I haven’t seen it – presumably it is an American show?
dangorironhide: I do too – it makes them quite a lot of fun to work on too. I figured that it would be a good time to start doing some “Another 10…” lists because some of the old ones were very popular.
Yeah it was hosted by Star Trek The Next Generation’s Johnathan Frakes. It was done similar to the Unsolved Mysteries TV show. It was actually called Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction. They gave you like 5 stories and you had to guess if they were real or urban legends.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Belief:_Fact_or_Fiction
I wish some were on youtube, but I could only find the Richard Dawkins debate by the same name.
Number one. O_O
That’s so amazing.
love your website and lists like these!
good list here, very interesting.
And also Jfrater, you missed the most amazing co-incidence EVER.
I mean EVER.
In 1898 Morgan Robertson released ‘Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan’. A floating palace sailed from Southampton, England in April, 1898 on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic. She was the biggest and most luxurious liner ever built. The liner was meant to be unsinkable. She was destined for America. But the ship never reached her destination, her hull was ripped open by an iceberg and she sank causing a heavy loss of life as there wasn’t enough lifeboats for the passengers (24 lifeboats for 3000 passengers). The ship was called Titan.
In 1912, a large luxury liner that was built to be unsinkable sailed from Southampton, England to America. She was on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic. The ship struck an iceberg which ripped apart the hull, and the ship sank. There were only 24 lifeboats for the entire ship (about 2200 people), and many people died. This ship was called the Iitanic.
Co-incidence? Well, yes.
Actually, I have a more too:
Solutions to the popular crossword puzzle in the Daily Telegraph gave a nasty headache to security officers who were responsible for guarding the secrets of the planned invasion of Europe by the allies in June 1944. Members of MI5, Britain’s counter-espionage service who used to wile away their spare moments in this pastime, noticed that some of the clues appeared to give away vital code names invented to cloak the mightiest seaborne attack of all time. The answer to the clue ‘one of the U.S.’ turned out to be, for instance, UTAH, and another, OMAHA – beaches on which the American armies were to land. Another answer was MULBERRY, the floating harbors that would accommodate and supply ships. NEPTUNE was the naval support. Most suspicious of all, there was a clue about ‘some big-wig’ which produced the answer OVERLORD, the codeword invented to describe the entire operation. MI5 was in a flap. Was the Telegraph crossword being used to tip off the Germans? Two officers were sent to Leatherhead, in Surrey, to find out. There they interviewed the compiler of the puzzles, Leonard Dawe, a 54-year old teacher. Why, they demanded, had he chosen those five words for his solutions? Why not? replied Dawe, somewhat indignant. Was there any law against choosing whatever words he liked? Dawe’s patient honesty convinced MI5 that he had no knowledge of the coming D-Day invasion strategy. His crossword solutions were just another of life’s astonishing coincidences.
Hey Jamie, why does it say I’m not logged in but when I click the login button it say I already am.
mystern: it is the result of installing Squid – something to help with our uptime issues – I have asked them to sort it out – hopefully it will be soon!
Oh nevermind. It’s fixed. I really enjoyed the first list and this is a great followup.
i understand that if enough air is stored in the lead coffin, than it might be able to float, but I’m having a hard time picturing that when your limited to the size of a coffin. In fact, I could imagine that coffin just sinking like a stone.
Of all the places for the guy’s casket to wash up, and it washed up in his home town. My thought was, “Wow” and “it’s a shame he wasn’t alive to appreciate going home.”
I’m suprised the coincidences between Presidents Kennedy and Lincoln and their secretaries didn’t make the list.
Some of these just prove that history does repeat itself!
Many of the Kennedy and Lincoln “coincidences” have been debunked.
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/lincoln-kennedy.asp
I really hate it when people bring up those Kennedy-Lincoln ‘similarties’. Biggest load of bull***** since the moon landings conspiracies.
dangorironhide: moon landing conspiracy? How can there be a conspiracy about something that never happened?
Dangorironhide: Well there are a ton of supporting facts that the moon landing was faked.
jfrater:
I have a feeling our libraries are very similar….
Damn. Ninjaed by jfrater.
Randall: what makes you think so?
J & Mystern: Har dee har har *****ing har…
jfrater:
Because whenever books come up in your lists, we always seem to have read the same stuff, be it highbrow literature or no, and our interests seem to be in line—I have about a half-dozen books on coincidence, for example.
You cannot say that all of the Apollo missions were faked. Although there is lots of evidence supporting the 1st landing (with Armstrong) being faked, it is highly likely that the later ones did actually land on the moon, and people did walk on the moon.
albert0: I completely agree.
Another good list Jamie – FREAKY!! BTW, randall could be fibbing to get in your good graces, be aware he has a fetish for monkeys!
As for the moon landing it could be fake but like albert0 stated the later ones would have to be real.. either that or NASA stands for “Not Actually Seriously ‘Appening”
Oh god, what have I started with the moon landings reference??
Citation needed.
Mystern: there is plenty of evidence that the moon landing really happened.
Notice how “coincidence” seems to inspire “conspiracy”?
hahahaha; amazing the number of people who don’t realize sarcasm when they see it…lol
Randall: ah! I understand
I love the show Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction! Their stories always send chills up my spine. The coincidences here are creepy too. It’s like there have to be some supernatural force behind them.
here’s one of my favorites:
On October 15, 1952, Robert Paterson tried to board an Amtrak train from Phoenix to Los Angeles. The conductor told him that Robert Paterson was already onboard. After a quick check, they discovered that both men had tickets. The men were similar height, weight and appearance.
On the way to LA, the train made an emergency stop in Barstow to pick up another passenger: Robert Paterson. The third Mr. Paterson was also similar in appearance to the first two. The train now had three men with the same name and appearance, all headed for LA.
Once they train arrived in Los Angeles, the three Robert Patersons disembarked and went their separate ways. The baggage was unloaded and the train was prepared for the return trip to Phoenix. As the new passengers were boarding, the conductor couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw a familiar name on the passenger list: a fourth Robert Paterson.
Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction was a freakin awesome show.
For those who don’t know, the show has 5 stories, only some are true and you’re supposed to try to guess which ones were true.
There was a great one (that wound up being one of the true ones) where this kid was making trouble in the school. He was always a troublemaker and one day he just started spraypainting “Remember Pearl Harbor” everywhere, including the principal’s car. When the principal confronted him, “why do you keep painting this everywhere?” the student insisted he wasn’t doing it and the principal let him go.
Two days later, on December 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan.
That last story is beautiful.
Of course, there’s the old “Bull***** or Not” bit from “Amazon Women on the Moon.”
Cane4Life: When the human body decomposes, the gases in the stomach expand and change and become quite buoyant. It is believable that it would be enough to let even a lead coffin float. Many bodies tied to rocks and thrown overboard have actually surfaced later as the gases expand and the body decomposed.
I love these ones. Very cool JF.
Kind of morbid for thousands of people to pick a lotto number off a train where 30 people died. Maybe its just New Yorkers.
Toolnut: haha I was thinking the same thing
on sept 11, 2002 the New York State Pick 3 lotto numbers were 911. tons of people won. (i know it happened because i worked at a store selling lottery tickets) i thought that was weirder than the oregon/virginia numbers.
They show Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction here in the UK on FX occasionally. I remember seeing an episode about a woman who was cursed by a gypsy that she would lose her beauty. She began becoming very paranoid and eventually asked a plastic surgeon to fix her. The surgeon said he could see nothing wrong and that her face looked normal, however when she looked in the mirror she saw a horrifying face that still haunts me to this day and was the first thing that ever truly scared me to the point of hypnophobia. Does anyone remmeber this particular episode and where I can watch it online?
I love these Lists…… and i also miss that show Beyond Belief!! This stuff is so interesting!
yayay i love it!
How about the strange coincidence of O.J. Simpson wearing the same shoes the killer wore? Apparently everything that linked him to the murders was a strange coinsidence
JT: I remember that one! It was great. So I’m not sure about where you can watch it anywhere, but if you look up the show on IMDB, I seem to remember someone posting a website that listed all the episodes on it (on message boards). If I get a chance I’ll try to find it.
MarkJ: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
by the way – my story above – fiction.
Jono, in “Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan”, the ship Titan was on its third journey not its first. Also, the reason both ships had 24 was because that was the minimum for the time period. Not really a coincidence. but very interesting. Great list Jamie!
I like number 1 the best…
I read a story somewhere about a man whose wife was in NY visiting someone. I forget the exact story but she was suppose to board the first plane that hit on 9/11 and ended up missing it for some reason or another. You’d think that would be a happy ending but then she took another flight, having missed the first one, and it ended up being the second plane that hit the Towers. Sad and unfortunate… I think he also lost his son or something like that. Anyone know what story I’m talking about?
CK: I don’t think that’s true. The flights were headed to completely different destinations.
Oh.. maybe I don’t have the story straight. Perhaps she was making a detour or something? I know I read it in a legitimate magazine so it couldn’t have been made up. I just thought it was a horrible coincidence.
on #8, you would think after a while, that family would stay inside during thunderstorms!
I would think the family might move out of town or something.
These stories are so cool,
so what if all of them might not be true?
Wow. How about this: Last nat, I was a soiree and was talking to a friend about this site, an I kid you not, I bumped into a man who’s name was jamie frater. Astounding.
-Andrea Carlena Beauman
**Night. Stupid typo. Stupid me.
-Andrea Carlena Beauman