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Life-moments

1900s

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James Dean   The street-sweeper   Twins ~ with a lot in common   Norman Mailer   Mark Twain   Not quite total strangers  

Moped Riders     Matching Drawers     The Mowforth Twins

What's in a name?    Jack Frost      

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James Dean

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In September 1955, James Dean was killed in a horrific car accident whilst he was driving his Porsche sports car. After the crash the car was seen as very unlucky. Here’s some reasons why:

  • When the car was towed away from accident scene and taken to a garage, the engine slipped out and fell onto a mechanic, shattering both of his legs.

  • Eventually the engine was bought by a doctor, who put it into his racing car and was killed shortly afterwards, during a race. Another racing driver, in the same race, was killed in his car, which had James Dean’s drive shaft fitted to it.

  • When James Dean’s Porsche was later repaired, the garage it was in was destroyed by fire.

  • Later the car was displayed in Sacramento, but it fell off it’s mount and broke a teenager’s hip.

  • In Oregon, the trailer that the car was mounted on slipped from it’s tow bar and smashed through the front of a shop.

  • Finally, in 1959, the car mysteriously broke into 11 pieces while it was sitting on steel supports.

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The Street-sweeper

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Did the baby

survive

the third fall/push?

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“In Detroit sometime in the 1930s, a young (if incredibly careless) mother must have been eternally grateful to a man named Joseph Figlock.

As Figlock was walking down the street, the mother’s baby fell from a high window onto Figlock. The baby’s fall was broken and both man and baby were unharmed.

A stroke of luck on its own, but a year later, the very same baby fell from the very same window onto poor, unsuspecting Joseph Figlock as he was again passing beneath. And again, they both survived the event.” 

Source: 17 Chilling Real-Life Coincidences You Won’t Believe Are Actually

Originally quoted in: Mysteries of the Unexplained (An Amazon Publication)

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Twins ~ with a lot in common

The stories of identical twins’ nearly identical lives are often astonishing, but perhaps none more so than those of identical twins born in Ohio.

The twin boys were separated at birth, being adopted by different families. Unknown to each other, both families named the boys James. And here the coincidences just begin.

Both James grew up not even knowing of the other, yet both sought law-enforcement training, both had abilities in mechanical drawing and carpentry, and each had married women named Linda. They both had sons whom one named James Alan and the other named James Allan.

The twin brothers also divorced their wives and married other women – both named Betty. And they both owned dogs which they named Toy. Forty years after their childhood separation, the two men were reunited to share their amazingly similar lives.

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Henry Ziegland

Source: 17 Chilling Real-Life Coincidences You Won’t Believe Are Actually True

Originally quoted in: Ripley's Believe It or Not!

“Henry Ziegland thought he had dodged fate.

In 1883, he broke off a relationship with his girlfriend who, out of distress, committed suicide. The girl’s brother was so enraged that he hunted down Ziegland and shot him. The brother, believing he had killed Ziegland, then turned his gun on himself.

But Ziegland had not been killed. The bullet, in fact, had only grazed his face and then lodged in a tree. Ziegland surely thought himself a lucky man.

Some years later, however, Ziegland decided to cut down the large tree, which still had the bullet in it. The task seemed so formidable that he decided to blow it up with a few sticks of dynamite. The explosion propelled the bullet into Ziegland’s head, killing him.”

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Norman Mailer

Source: 17 Chilling Real-Life Coincidences You Won’t Believe Are Actually True

Originally quoted in: Science Digest / Monthly Magazine

When Norman Mailer began his novel Barbary Shore, there was no plan to have a Russian spy as a character.

As he worked on it, he introduced a Russian spy in the U.S. as a minor character.

As the work progressed, the spy became the dominant character in the novel. After the novel was completed, the U.S. Immigration Service arrested a man who lived just one floor above Mailer in the same apartment building.

He was Colonel Rudolf Abel, alleged to be the top Russian spy working in the U.S. at that time.

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Mark Twain

Mark Twain was born on the day of the appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1835, and died on the day of its next appearance in 1910.

He himself predicted this in 1909, when he said: “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.

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Moped riders ~ Beware!

Source: 17 Chilling Real-Life Coincidences You Won’t Believe Are Actually True

Originally quoted in: Phenomena: A Book of Wonders, John Michell and Robert J. M. Rickard

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Mail for Mr Bryson

While on a business trip sometime in the late 1950s, Mr. George D. Bryson stopped and registered at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky.

After signing the register and being given his key to room 307, he stopped by the mail desk to see if any letters had arrived for him.

Indeed there was a letter, the mail girl told him, and handed him an envelope addressed to Mr. George D. Bryson, room 307.

This wouldn’t be so odd, except the letter was not for him, but for room 307’s just-previous occupant – another man named George D. Bryson. 

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Source: 17 Chilling Real-Life Coincidences You Won’t Believe Are Actually True

Originally quoted in: Incredible Coincidence, Alan Vaughan

The Mowforth Twins

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Source: 17 Chilling Real-Life Coincidences You Won’t Believe Are Actually True

Originally quoted in: Chronogenetics: The Inheretance of Biological Time, Luigi Gedda and Gianni Brenci

What's in a name?

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Source: 17 Chilling Real-Life Coincidences You Won’t Believe Are Actually True

Jack Frost ~ warm memories

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While American novelist Anne Parrish was browsing bookstores in Paris in the 1920s, she came upon a book that was one of her childhood favorites – Jack Frost and Other Stories.

She picked up the old book and showed it to her husband, telling him of the book she fondly remembered as a child. Her husband took the book, opened it, and on the flyleaf found the inscription: “Anne Parrish, 209 N. Weber Street, Colorado Springs.”

It was Anne’s very own book. 

Source: 20 Most Amazing Coincidences

Originally quoted in: While Rome Burns, Alexander Wollcott

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