Stranger than fiction – astounding coincidences from the past that will amaze you
1. This 3,000 year old Egyptian bust mildly resembles Michael Jackson.
The Egyptian bust belongs to the New Kingdom Period which existed between 1550 BC and 1050 BC, around the same time as the famous Egyptians Ramesses and King Tut. The limestone statue has slightly gaunt cheeks, big slanted eyes, a thin and tipless nose which strikingly resemble the King of Pop. The bust’s popularity raised significantly when he died in 2009 and his fans blogged about it because of the resemblance. To protect the statue, the museum officials have put it in a glass case and banned visitors from touching or kissing it.
2. A man named Walter Summerford was struck by lightning 3 times in his life. After his death, his gravestone was also struck by lightning.
Though hundreds of lightning occurs every day all over the world, being struck by one of them is definitely not a pleasant experience. Major Walter Summerford was a sportsman who was struck by lightning three times when he was alive and a fourth time on his grave. Another man named Roy Sullivan, a park ranger who spent most of his working time outdoors, was struck by lightning seven times.
3. In Detroit in the 1930s, a baby fell from a high window and landed on a man who was passing the street below. The baby and the man both survived the incident. A year later, the SAME baby fell from the SAME window and landed on the SAME man, and they both survived.
Joseph Figlock, the man in question, was walking down the street that day when the baby fell. Luckily for the baby, the fall was broken and it survived the fall. The first fall is a lucky coincidence by itself, and the second fall and survival is probably just one of those things that must have happened in real life because they are too damn unbelievable even for a work of fiction.
4. Enzo Ferrari, founder of Ferrari, died in 1988. Footballer Mesut Özil was born in 1988, and looks just like Ferrari.
The similarities are just uncanny, and the fact that Ferrari died the same year as Mesut was born is just the mother of all coincidences. Enzo Ferrari, as everyone knows, was the founder of the Italian sports car line, a race driver and also founded the Scuderia Grand Prix motor racing team. Mesut, on the other hand, is a German national team player and Arsenal Club player.
5. In 1975, a 17 year old boy was killed while riding his moped. He was killed exactly a year after his 17 year old brother was killed while riding the same moped, at the same intersection, by the same taxi, with the same driver, carrying the same passenger.
Erskine Lawrence and Neville Ebbin were two brothers from Hamilton, Bermuda, born a year apart. Both were 17 when they died after colliding with the same taxi, driven by the same driver and carrying the same passenger. The two cases were different only by being a year apart. This is one of the best examples of bizarre coincidences.
6. In 1903, when William West arrived at Leavenworth prison, the clerk insisted that he was here before, only to find out that there was another man called William West who looked exactly like him serving in the same prison. Since then, fingerprints are used to identify people.
Considering how many people are born everyday and the population of the world, it is not impossible to have someone with similar features and the same name as well. The similarities between the two prisoners were so uncanny that even the second William West was shocked how his picture got in the register when he had never been to Leavenworth before. Until then something called Bertillion measurements were used to identify people and after this fingerprints were a more accepted means for accuracy.
7. Mark Twain was born after the visit of Halley’s Comet in 1835 and he died the day after its return in 1910.
What’s even more bizarre is what he said a year before his death.
“I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together’.”
8. Two women, who were working in the same hospital, adopted by American families as children, had their DNA tested and found out that they were in fact sisters separated when they were very young.
When they were very young, Eun-Sook, now Meagan Hughes, was taken by her mother and her half-sister Pok-nam Shin, now Holly Hoyle O’Brien, was left with their alcoholic father. O’Brien was later sent to the orphanage after he died and was adopted by an American couple. Hughes also suffered the same fate after her mother died and was adopted by another American family 300 miles away from where O’Brien was staying. O’Brien was hired in a hospital in Sarasota, Florida, three months after which Hughes also started working there, when they met.
9. In 2009, an expert in Mexico kidnappings who negotiated the release of at least 100 victims was kidnapped in Saltillo where he went to give lectures on how to avoid kidnapping.
Mexico is fraught with regular kidnapping cases, with at least a 100 people missing each month. On December 10, 2008, Felix Batista received a phone call while he was eating at a restaurant after which he climbed into a vehicle with someone. He was never to be seen or sighted after that. Hours after Batista disappeared, a local security expert and friend who was previously abducted was released.
10. After filming ‘The Omen’ (1976), John Richardson, the set designer who designed the set where a character gets decapitated, met with similar fate when and he and his assistant Liz Moore had with an accident on Friday the 13th near a sign that read “Ommen, 66.6 km”. Moore was cut in half in the accident.
The set of the movie was believed to be cursed because of the number of spooky incidents that took place during and after filming. The set designer, John Richardson, designed a set for the movie in which one of the characters dies from decapitation after being in a freaky accident. Call it coincidence or an omen, the same thing happened when he was travelling in Holland with his assistant in August 1976.
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