Exploring the Unknown: Coincidence or Design?

Simple weirdness or a cosmic alignment of the universe?

If you’ve read my book, The Apostle’s Fury, (and really, who hasn’t😜) you will recall the dashing FBI Agent, Jake Devereaux, explaining to our heroine that there is no such thing as coincidence, only design. After doing a little bit of research, I am starting to think that, perhaps, Jake is on the right track. Maybe everything really is part of the big picture, the grand design.

Kind of gives you the creeps, right? Contemplating if somewhere, out there, there’s a short bald guy with a monocle and a cane (think the Monopoly guy here) who is directing fate and the universe to intertwine with our reality.

Don’t believe me? Read on, boys and girls, while I blow your socks off with some of the craziest coincidences I’ve found.

We’ll begin with family coincidences…and the twins from Ohio.

Two boys, separated at birth, went on to be adopted. They were both named James by their adoptive parents and both had sons they named James. Both boys married women named Linda and divorced them. Both remarried ladies named Betty. Jim and Jim also both had dogs named Toy and grew up to be police officers.

You recall the name John Wilkes Booth, right? Turns out his family and Abraham Lincoln’s would be connected before Booth assassinated the President. A year before Booth killed Lincoln, his brother, Edwin, is credited with saving Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd, as a boy. Robbie, it seems, got a bit too close to some train tracks and Edwin pulled him to safety. Years later, Robert Todd would not only be witness in some respects to his father’s assassination, but he also witnessed the assassination of both James Garfield and William McKinley.

Makes you wonder if that’s why the fellow never ran for office.😳

Here’s one about being in the wrong place at the wrong time…In 1974, a taxi driver in Bermuda struck and killed a man riding his moped. One year later, that same driver (carrying the same passenger) would strike and kill the first man’s brother, who was riding the same moped. On the same street.

Dang that’s rough.

Here’s another one having to do with family: When constructing the Hoover Dam, over 100 men were killed in various accidents. The first man to die was a fellow named George Tierney. George was a surveyor, scoping out the possible positioning of the dam, when he fell in the Colorado River and drowned on December 20, 1922. The last man to die working on the dam was Patrick Tierney, George’s son. He died thirteen years later, in 1935, on, you guessed it, December 20th.

Filed under the tagline “It’s hell to travel”, a woman named Violet Jessup became known as ‘Miss Unsinkable” after surviving the sinking of not one, not two, but three ocean vessels: The Olympic in 1911, the Titanic in 1912, and the Britannic in 1916.

You’d think she’d get a clue. I wonder if future passengers booked a ticket only with the caveat “As long as SHE won’t be sailing with us.”

Sometimes, it pays to be cheap. A man named Maarten de Jorge was booked on two separate Malaysian Air Flights in 2014. Both times, he bumped his ticket at the last moment for a cheaper flight. The angels must have been smiling on him, because the first flight he changed ended up being shot down over the Ukraine. And the second? Disappeared without a trace, somewhere over the Indian Ocean.

This one is nutty, too. In 1746, a man by the name of Jean Marie (? really) Dubarry was sentenced to death after killing his father. One hundred years after his execution, a man named Jean Marie (?again?) Dubarry, no relation, was executed for the crime of patricide. Which, for those of you in the back, means killing your Pops.

Then we have the case of the South American astronomer who was doing a lecture tour, speaking about how death can strike us anywhere, at any time, without warning. Following the talk, he popped a mint in his mouth and choked to death.

But at least his breath was minty fresh.

Edgar Allen Poe was a character, wasn’t he? Some say he was also a psychic. In one of the freakiest coincidences I’ve ever heard, Poe wrote a story about four sailors whose boat suffered crippling injuries at sea. Stranded and starving, they catch a sea turtle and eat it but, alas, it is not enough for four men. Deciding someone must be sacrificed, they draw straws and the poor cabin boy named Richard Parker comes up short.

I heard he went well with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. But, still, all in Poe’s imagination, right?

Perhaps not. Forty-six years later, a yacht called the Mignonette left England for Australia. Not exactly a ‘sail around the world’ kind of vessel, it sank during a storm. The crew of four men, on a lifeboat, were able to catch a turtle to eat the first day. But, well you get the picture.

Enter a young cabin boy who, terrified, drank some seawater and became quite ill. His castaway ‘friends’ did a ‘dog pile on the rabbit’ move and killed him, drinking his blood and then devouring him. But the strangest part? The kids name was Richard Parker.

I know what you’re thinking. That’s cray cray—And I’m never going on a yacht or a moped or a Malaysian airline or a luxury liner. I’m with ya, there, my friends.

Did you know Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, one-time friends who became political rivals, died within hours of each other on July 4th, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence? And that a third Founding Father, James Monroe, died five years later, also on the fourth of July?

The more you know.

Last but surely not least, we have the curious case, the parallels between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Some of these you may have heard of, some of the ‘facts’ that I’ve heard of comparing these two felt kind of weak, so I left them out. What’s left is, what I believe, beyond coincidence. Take a gander and see what ye think.

*Lincoln and Kennedy both were assassinated, shot in the back of the head. Lincoln was shot in Ford’s theater, Kennedy was shot in a Lincoln, made by the Ford Company.

*Both men died on a Friday and in the presence of their wives. Both were killed right before a major holiday, Easter for Lincoln and Thanksgiving for Kennedy.

*Kennedy had a secretary named Mrs. Lincoln. Lincoln had two male secretaries, both named John.

*The two Presidents each lost a son while serving in the Whitehouse. Lincoln lost his son, Willie, and Kennedy lost his infant boy, Patrick.

*Lincoln became President in 1860. Kennedy, in 1960.

*Their vice-presidents were both named Johnson.

*And speaking of their successors, Andrew Johnson was born in 1808, Lyndon Johnson in 1908.

So, there you have it, gang. Some of the freakiest, strangest coincidences I could dig up. I hope you learned something today and have found this as interesting as I did. I hope you never stop looking for parallels and coincidences in our existence.

And I hope you never ask me to draw straws with you while we are on a sinking ship.

Til next time, my friends! Just keep swimming!

—Q