• From the conspiracy of left-handed presidents to a taxi driver who killed two brothers in
two separate incidents, we count fifteen weird coincidences that actually happened!
15 – Falling Baby Twice Saved by Same Man, • In 1937, a young, super responsible Detroit
mother somehow dropped her baby out of a forth-story building.
A local street sweeper named Joseph Figlock happened to be walking underneath at the time
and was struck in the head and shoulders by the falling infant.
• Miraculously, the baby lived, though he and Figlock sustained injuries.
• The following year, a different, though equally careless mother allowed her two-year-old
son David Thomas to plummet from a high-rise window.
Joseph Figlock, who was sweeping in an alley trying to make his beautiful city shine, was
again struck in the head and, again, neither he nor the child were killed.
• Must’ve been quite a catch, this Figlock character.
Women can’t seem to help throwing their children at him.
14 – Left-Handed Presidents Conspiracy, • Only ten percent of the U.S. population
is left-handed, but you'd never know it by looking at the American presidents.
• More than half of the last fourteen presidents were lefties, including five of the last seven.
What’s especially interesting about this is that in the 18th and 19th Centuries, left-handedness
was considered a punishable disability.
Kids were actually forced to be right-handed until the 1970s, so it would’ve been very
difficult for many of these presidents to excel with this setback.
• Will you vote for a leftie in the next election?
You may not have a choice.
Over the past two decades, nearly every presidential candidate has been left-handed.
In 2008, both Barack Obama and John McCain were left-handed.
In 1992, all three candidates for president were lefties.
• It’s been speculated that these left-handed monsters are actually a super secret race
who rule over the other ninety percent of society.
Certainly would explain a few things.
13 – Hugh Williams, Professional Shipwreck Survivor,
• Planning an ocean voyage any time soon?
Here’s a fun fact: there have been millions of shipwreck casualties throughout history.
However, if your name is ‘Hugh Williams’, you can sleep easy knowing nothing in Neptune’s
ocean can possibly harm you.
• Check this: in 1660, a ship sank in the Dover Straits.
A man named ‘Hugh Williams’ was the only survivor.
In 1767, a second ship sank in the same area.
The only survivor was another ‘Hugh Williams’.
In 1820, a ship capsized on the Thames.
The only survivor was a man named ‘Bruce Hancock’ – just kidding; it was Hugh Williams.
• Finally, in 1940, a ship was destroyed by a German mine.
Only two survived: a man and his nephew, both named – *cue X-Files music* – Hugh Williams!
12 – Deus Ex Twin Towers Omen, • How’s this for a spooky omen?
During the production of the critically acclaimed 2000 PC game Deus Ex, the skybox artist neglected
to include the Twin Towers to the New York City skyline.
Some reports say he plain forgot, or, according to another explanation, memory constraints
made it impossible to render the towers, so they had to be written out of the game’s
fiction.
• The in-game explanation for the discrepancy was a terrorist attack.
Unless the developers had a crystal ball, there’s no way they could’ve known how
prescient this detail was.
11 – Brotherly Moped Suicide Pact, • In 1975, while riding a moped in Bermuda,
a man was accidentally struck and killed by a taxi.
Fortunately, it taught the world a lesson about how dangerous mopeds are and no one
ever rode one again.
Just kidding!
• A year later, the man’s brother was killed in the very same way.
He was even riding the same moped – which they’d presumably just finished paying repair
repayments for.
• In case your jaw has room to drop a little further, the brother was struck by the very
same taxi driven by the same driver.
Nope, not finished yet!
He was even carrying the same passenger.
10 – JKF–Lincoln Coincidences, • America’s most beloved presidents had
a whole laundry list of things in common.
It actually transitions from cool to creepy after about the fifth one.
Maybe they had the same stylist.
Don’t know how else to account for some of these.
• Firstly, Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846, while John F. Kennedy was
elected a century to the year.
Lincoln won his election in 1860, with his inauguration being held in 1861, while Kennedy
won his election in 1960, with his inauguration following in early 1961.
• Both their vice presidents and successors were Southern Democrats named Johnson, which
is another word for dick.
• Both were shot in the back of the head in front of their wives on a Friday, and Lincoln
was shot in Ford’s Theatre, while Kennedy was shot in a Lincoln, which was made by Ford.
• And the creepiest coincidence of all?
Lincoln and Kennedy both have seven letters in their name.
What?
That one’s lame?
You’re lame!
9 – Franz Ferdinand Assassination Omen, • Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was
assassinated in a car that had the licence plate read ‘A III-118’.
• This is remarkable because the war that resulted from this act ended with an armistice
on the 11th of November 1918.
Effectively, the plate was like a coded premonition: A (for Armistice) 11/11/18.
Spooky. 8 – Message in a Bottle Face-Off,
• In 2006, fisherman Mark Anderson, who was manning the fishing boat Copious, found
a ninety-two-year-old message in a bottle.
The discovery landed him a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the oldest
message in a bottle ever recovered.
• Being a fisherman, Anderson enjoyed bragging to his friend, Andrew Leaper, about his new
find.
Leaper quickly tired of Anderson’s bragging and probably wanted to shove his bottle where
the sun doesn’t shine.
• Six years later, while manning Copious off the Scottish coast, skipper Andrew Leaper
one-upped the braggart Anderson by finding his own message in a bottle – this time
one that had floated aimlessly at sea for an incredible ninety-eight years!
• Leaper consequently took Anderson’s spot in the record book, leaving Anderson
with much less to brag about.
7 – James Dean’s Car Curse, • In 1955, Hollywood heartthrob and cause-less
rebel James Dean was killed in a horrific car accident while driving around in his Porsche.
The car was later considered a bad luck omen.
• Case in point: when the car was towed from the accident scene and taken to a garage,
the engine slipped out and onto a mechanic, shattering both his legs.
• The engine was eventually bought by a wealthy doctor, who used it to soup-up his
racing car.
He died shortly after during a race.
Another driver died in the very same race and his car had James Dean’s driveshaft
fitted in it.
• The garage where Dean’s Porsche was repaired was later destroyed by fire.
The car was then displayed in Sacramento, but somehow fell off its mount, breaking a
teenager’s hip.
• In Oregon, the trailer the Porsche was mounted on slipped from its towbar, smashing
into a shopfront.
Finally, in 1959, the car mysteriously broke into 11 pieces while sitting on steel supports.
• Where do I sign up?
6 – King Umberto the First’s Double, • The classic doppelganger story.
In Monza, Italy, King Umberto the First felt like hitting up a restaurant in town for dinner.
Accompanied by his General aide, he found one that fit the bill.
But when the owner of the restaurant took his order, the King noticed they were virtual
doubles, in face and in build.
• They began discussing the striking resemblance and discovered many more similarities.
• Both men were born on the same day, of the same year, and in the same town.
• Each married a woman named Margherita and the restaurateur had opened his restaurant
on the very day 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.
While mourning this loss, the King was then assassinated by an anarchist in the crowd.
• The obvious explanation here is that they were doubles from parallel universes.
5 – The Curse of the Dragon, • Martial arts super star and serial shirt-ripper
Bruce Lee unwittingly predicted the cause of his son’s death with the plot of his
final movie.
• Enter the Dragon was released in 1973, two decades before the death of Lee’s son,
Brandon.
In the film, Lee’s character is killed when a prop gun is substituted for a real one,
causing him to take an actual bullet by mistake.
Lee’s son would later be killed when a prop gun misfired on the set of The Crow.
Strange coincidence, considering this is hardly a common cause of death.
• A movie was also made about Bruce’s life.
In Dragon: the Bruce Lee Story, Bruce battles a metaphorical demon that haunts his family.
During the final confrontation, the malevolent spirit loses interest Bruce and instead targets
his son.
• The creepy thing is Brandon was alive and well when they shot the movie.
The idea that Brandon was the demon’s next target was written and shot two months before
his freak accident.
• The film’s director Robert Cohen believes Brandon’s death was fated to happen.
Could be onto something.
4 – Bullet Reaches its Destiny Years Later, • In 1883, Henry Ziegland was supposed to
die.
He’d been shot in the face by the enraged brother of the girlfriend he’d just abandoned.
The devastated girl had committed suicide and the brother wished for Ziegland to pay
with his blood.
• Believing he had killed Ziegland, the brother then took his own life.
Apparently suicidal urges run deep in this family.
• However, his quest for vengeance went unfulfilled because Ziegland lived.
Miraculously, the bullet had only grazed his face and then lodged in a tree.
Ziegland thought he was the luckiest man alive.
• He definitely wasn’t the smartest, though, because, years later, he returned to the scene
of his near-death and decided to cut down the large tree, which still had the bullet
in it.
When the task proved too difficult, he decided to blow it up with a few sticks of dynamite.
• That’s when the explosion propelled the lodged bullet out of the tree and into
Ziegland's head, killing him.
3 – Poker Winnings go to Unsuspecting Son, • In 1858, a British man named Robert Fallon
was shot dead by his poker rivals, who suspected him of cheating.
Fallon had racked up a $600 pot with his dishonest tactics.
• In those days, players were superstitious about taking money that’d been won by cheating,
so the gamblers gave it to the first person who passed the saloon.
The new player agreed to take Fallon’s place and was staked with the dead man’s $600.
Against all expectations, the new player turned the $600 into a cool two grand.
• Police soon arrived to investigate the murder and demanded the original $600 be passed
on to Fallon’s next of kin.
That’s when everyone discovered the new player was actually Fallon’s estranged son,
who had not seen his father in nearly a decade.
2 – Two Mr Brysons, Same Hotel Room, • A man inadvertently booked the same hotel
room as someone who shared his exact name.
• While taking a trip for business sometime in the late 1950s, George D. Bryson checked
into the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky.
• After signing the register and being handed the key to his room – room 307 – he stopped
by the mail desk to, presumably, chat up the receptionist, and to see if any mail had arrived
for him.
• There was a letter waiting for him, and the mail girl handed it to him.
The envelope was addressed to ‘Mr George D. Bryson, room 307’.
• What made it odd is that the letter wasn’t for him; it was for room 307’s previous
occupant, a man who had just checked out – another George D. Bryson.
Think of all the missed potential for credit card fraud.
1 – Twin Brothers Killed on Same Road, Two Hours Apart,
• In 2002, a pair of seventy-year-old twin brothers died within hours of each other following
separate accidents on the same northern Finland road.
• The first twin died when he was struck by a lorry while riding his bike in a blizzard
in Raahe, a town six hundred kilometres north of Helsinki.
He was crossing Highway 8 at the time, but is now probably crossing the River Styx.
• The second twin died just one and a half kilometres from where his brother was killed.
He was also killed by a lorry only two hours later while attempting to cross the very same
highway.
The second brother couldn't have been aware of the first brother's death, as the police
were still trying to identify the victim.
• A Finnish police officer described it as a historic coincidence.
They said that although the road is busy, accidents don't occur on it every day – let
alone the separate deaths of twin brothers.