10 Amazing Coincidences You Won't Believe Actually Happened

10 Amazing Coincidences You Won't Believe Actually Happened

Most individuals are split into two groups when a coincidence occurs: those who are prone to write off such occurrences as chance, and those who perceive significance or a wider pattern behind them. The cosmos is continuously working to sprinkle little moments of serendipity into our daily lives, despite how implausible it may seem to meet your doppelgänger or have the same birthday as your best friend. The most amazing coincidences in history are listed here. So continue reading and be ready to be astounded by these startling coincidences that will convince even the most skeptical readers that fate is real.

1. Political adversaries Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died within hours of each other—on July 4th.

The relationship between former presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams took quite a few twists and turns over the years. They began as allies, then gradually grew into adversaries as their politics divided them. As the last two surviving members of the American revolutionaries from the British Empire, they eventually reconciled and corresponded by letter until their final years. They famously died within hours of one another on the same day in 1826: on the Fourth of July, no less.

2. John Wilkes Booth's brother saved Abraham Lincoln's son from death.

John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln reportedly had a coincidental family connection long before Booth shot Lincoln on that fateful day in April in 1865. Booth's brother, Edwin, was a somewhat famous stage actor who ardently supported the Union during the Civil War. While in a train station in New Jersey, Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, leaned up against a stopped train, nearly falling onto the tracks as it started up again. Edwin Booth grabbed him by the collar and saved him just in time. The younger Lincoln recognized his hero and wrote about the incident, but it wasn't until years later that Booth found out who he had saved.

3. And that same son of Lincoln's witnessed three presidential assassinations.

While it would be rare to be present for the death of any president, Robert Todd Lincoln was in some way present for not one, not two, but three presidential assassinations. Though he wasn't there at the theater during his father's fateful shooting, he was rushed to his deathbed and sat by his side until the elder Lincoln passed away. Later, he was an eye-witness to the killing of President James A. Garfield. Finally, in 1901, Lincoln was nearby in Buffalo, New York, at the invitation of President William McKinley, when the president was fatally shot.

4. One woman survived the Titanic, Britannic, and Olympic shipwrecks.

Violet Jessop was a nurse and ocean liner stewardess who earned the nickname "Miss Unsinkable" by surviving both the accidents of the Titanic in 1912 and its sister ship, the HMHS Britannic, which met the same fate in 1916. Jessup was also reportedly on board a third boat, the RMS Olympic, when it hit a war ship—but fortunately, the Olympic stayed afloat.

5. The first and last battles of the Civil War were fought next to the same man's property—in different towns.

The Civil War broke out in 1861 with the First Battle of Bull Run. "Bull Run" references the name of a stream that wound its way through the farm of a 46-year-old grocer named Wilmer McLean in Manassas, Virginia. After the devastation of the battle, McLean left to find safety in a new home with his wife in Appomattox, Virginia, and, for roughly four years, he was indeed safe as the bloody war overtook the nation. In 1865, the war came to a close when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at the Appottomax Courthouse—just steps from McLean's new property.

6. The first and last soldiers killed in WWI are buried next to each other.

By the time World War I came to an end, it had claimed an estimated one million British lives. Yet somehow, without any planning, the first recorded English casualty of the war, 17-year-old soldier John Parr, and the last recorded casualty, 30-year-old George Edwin Ellison, reportedly have graves that face one another just 15 feet apart in the Saint Symphorien Military Cemetery.

7. Solar eclipses require such specific conditions they're almost impossible.

Just as we have remarkable coincidences, so does our solar system. The total solar eclipse is such a strange and unlikely occurrence that throughout history, it's been interpreted as a paranormal omen and mythologized with folklore. Though the sun and moon are very different sizes, the phenomenon is able to take place because the sun is about 400 times wider than the moon, but also 400 times farther away, making the two appear the same size. According to LiveScience, if the sun were any bigger or the moon were any further away, we would likely never see a total solar eclipse, because the moon wouldn't appear wide enough to block our view.

8. Two sets of twins who were separated at birth found each other.

In 2015, The New York Times Magazine published the extraordinary story of two sets of identical twins that had been split up at birth and raised as two sets of fraternal twins in Bogota, Colombia.

The story began when a colleague of Jorge, one of the twins, had a chance encounter with his biological twin, William, in the butcher shop where William worked. The colleague was shocked by William's incredible likeness to Jorge, and told him what she'd seen. When she showed Jorge a picture of the man in the butcher shop, they pulled up his Facebook page only to discover that he was in many pictures with someone that looked just like Jorge's own brother, Carlos. The two sets of twins eventually met one another and remain in touch today.

9. A father found his long-lost daughter in the background of his photo.

According to The Daily Mail, Michael Dick and his estranged daughter, Lisa, hadn't seen each other in over 10 years when he began searching for her again. Michael and his then-wife had separated, and Lisa and her mother moved away to Suffolk, England. In the hopes that Lisa would see it and contact him, Michael reached out to a newspaper and requested that they publish a current picture of him and his other two daughters.

Not only did Lisa see the picture, she realized that she and her mother were actually standing in the distant background of it. Her father had been totally unaware that she was just yards away when the photographer snapped the shot.

10. The "Jim Twins" were separated at birth, but led nearly identical lives.

Twins and coincidences seem to go hand-in-hand. For starters, the very likelihood of conceiving twins is relatively low at 33 in 1,000, but frequently, the uncanny circumstances run deeper than that—and the "Jim Twins" are a prime example. Separated at birth and raised by different families in Ohio, they finally met at the age of 39. Both sets of adopted parents named the boys James and called them "Jim" for short. Both men married twice; remarkably, both first wives were named Linda and both second wives were named Betty. Both had one son, who they had both named James Allen. According to Ripley's, they drove the same car, had similar jobs and even vacationed in the same place!