Top 10 Amazing Coincidences You Won't Believe Actually Happened
Top 10 Amazing Coincidences You Won't Believe Actually Happened
Top 20 MORE Creepiest Coincidences in History
They say coincidence is a wonderful thing. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’ll be counting down our picks for the Top 10 Amazing Coincidences You Won't Believe Actually Happened. For this list, we’ll be looking at coincidences throughout history that had more positive outcomes.
#10: The Triplets Reunited Years Later
Top 10 Things We Can't Believe Happened 10 Years Ago
One doppelganger is bizarre enough, but what if you had two? As infants, three male triplets were individually adopted by separate families, each having no idea of each other's existence. Eighteen years later, two of them met when it turned out they went to the same college. When the astonishing story of these two reuniting was published, it eventually resulted in the third triplet seeking out his brothers. Astounded by the reunion, the three identical strangers became the subject of a 2018 documentary digging into the history of how they were separated in the first place. A spookier coincidence happened earlier regarding the separated twins James Allan and James Alan, who went on to live parallel lives involving sharing professions and names of wives and dogs among other similarities. Like looking in a mirror, ain’t it?
#9: The Thief on the Front Page
The Amazing Life of Queen Elizabeth II
At least one fool ended up on Santa’s naughty list in Idaho back in 2007. Just before Christmastime, sign painter Michael Millhouse made the front page of the Lewiston Tribune for his festive window decorations adorning the front of a store. But he didn’t stay a beloved community member for long. It just so happened that on the same front page a screengrab of some CCTV footage was featured, unknowingly outing Millhouse as the perpetrator behind a wallet theft. He was even wearing the same blue-checkered coat in both pictures, making the comparison unmistakable. Readers caught on quickly and called in their findings, and Millhouse was promptly taken into custody. It seems for this window-painting Grinch, it really was curtains.
#8: Disney World Photo Captures Future Couple
Top 10 Dark Stories About Working at Disney World
Some day, your prince will come… and he did, in the Magic Kingdom no less! Back when they were living in separate countries and long before they had met and fallen in love, both Donna and her future fiance Alex were snapped in the same photograph at Disney World. As a very young Donna and her family were posing with Mr. Smee, Alex was being pushed in the background by his father in a stroller. The engaged couple discovered the phenomenon as they were going through old photographs, in a twist of fate that seems to have been written in the stars. It’s heartwarming to know that, at least for this couple, a little Disney magic really did make their lives better.
#7: Same Chopper, Different Ages
Dance Crazes Through the Ages
Here’s a kid who had serendipitously high hopes. A young boy was at an airshow with his grandfather and had his photograph taken behind the controls of a Kiowa helicopter. This experience inspired him to pursue a career as a pilot, and twenty years on, the boy would grow up to fulfill his wish. He found the picture sometime after, and recognized the Kiowa helicopter as one of the craft he had been flying. Curiosity kicked in, and when he ventured to the hangar, the serial number on one of the copters confirmed it: he had been flying the same one he had sat in years earlier as a child where his dream was born. When it comes to wish fulfillment, the sky’s the limit.
#6: Hopkins Finds an Author’s Book
Anthony Hopkins had been cast in the adaptation of "The Girl From Petrovka" and wanted to read the original book, but couldn’t find a copy anywhere until he spotted a seemingly abandoned book on a nearby bench: It so happened to be a heavily annotated copy of the book he was looking for and took it with him. Later on while filming the movie, Hopkins met the book's author, George Feifer. Feifer mentioned that he had lent his own copy of the book to a friend who had misplaced it. Hopkins then showed Feifer the book he had found and Feifer recognized his own annotations, proving it was indeed Feifer's lost book. At least he can say without doubt that he did his research!
#5: Villager Saves a Father & Son 30 Years Apart
80-year-old Xu Weifang has been living by a river with his wife in the Jiangsu province of China for years. He became something of a local celebrity in 2018 when he saved a young boy from drowning in the river, despite recovering from an injury at the time, and the local news soon picked up on his heroic efforts. After a conversation with the boy, Mr. Xu was amazed when he discovered he had actually saved the same boy’s father thirty years earlier from drowning in the same river. Two generations of one family rescued from the water by the same good samaritan. Either Mr. Xu is their guardian angel, or Jiangsu just needs to invest in some guard rails.
#4: Franz Ferdinand’s Car Predicts the Armistice
The event that kicked off World War One is universally given as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, paving the way for four years of war that would tear through Europe before finally ceasing on November 11th 1918, known and celebrated today as Armistice Day. Strangely, this day of peace seemed to have already been set in stone at the war’s inception; Ferdinand was of course shot dead while riding in his car through the streets of Sarajevo, and the car now resides in an Austrian Military History Museum. It’s license plate reads ”AIII118”, which can be interpreted as A for Armistice and the date of the war’s conclusion. The Archduke has the honor of bookending the war with these important numbers. Poetic.
#3: Anne Parrish Finds Her Childhood Book
Here’s another one for the books: American author Anne Parrish had been inspired by "Jack Frost and Other Stories," which she owned as a child, and went on to enjoy a career of writing several novels and children's books. While taking a holiday to Paris during the 1920s, she and her husband were exploring the local bookshops, where she stumbled on an old secondhand copy of the same Jack Frost book she loved as a child. Amazingly, upon showing the book to her husband, he found her name and address written on the fly leaf. And so it was that Parrish had been reunited with her favorite book despite being separated by an entire ocean, though how it ended up in France in the first place is anyone’s guess.
#2: Violet Jessop Survives 3 Doomed Ships
Violet Jessop worked aboard ocean liners for the White Star Line throughout the early 20th century, even after seeing three maritime disasters. What a work ethic! She was aboard the Olympic in 1911 when it collided with a warship, and months later was one of the few survivors of the infamous Titanic sinking, even tending to a lost baby in her lifeboat. At the dawn of World War One she was working as a nurse aboard the Britannic, at the time repurposed as a hospital ship, when it struck an underwater mine in the Aegean Sea and foundered. Jessop was able to survive a head injury from a propeller and escape disaster once again. It’s still subjective whether to consider her lucky or unlucky. Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions. Abraham Lincoln's Son Was Saved from a Train by John Wilkes Booth's Brother It’s a Good Thing He Was Classically “Trained”... A Chicago Man Catches 2 Falling Babies Months Apart Here: Hold This for Me, Would Ya? William Shakespeare Has Multiple Connections with Psalm 46 Forty-Six. ‘Tis Thy Magic Number Man’s Missing Daughter Walks Through the Background of His Photograph Can We Take Another One? She Blinked!
#1: Entire Choir Avoids Church Explosion
Top 10 Science Breakthroughs That Destroyed Entire Industries
Like something out of “Final Destination,” a Baptist Church in Beatrice, Nebraska suffered a gas leak on March 1, 1950. This caused an explosion that demolished the building and would have surely killed everyone inside; that is, had anyone actually been inside! Astoundingly, all fifteen members of the choir scheduled to rehearse in the church that night were running late for their own individual reasons: oversleeping, uncompleted homework, a broken-down car, an exciting radio program and even pure laziness. All these separate catalysts deterred any of the congregation from arriving on time and spared them all from death. Fortunate to be alive, all they could do was speculate on the significance of the event: Was it luck? A fluke of probability? ...an act of God?
