10 Bizarre Co-incidences

The first prime minister of Pakistan, Liaqat Ali Khan was shot dead in 1951 the Rawalpindi park that was re-named after him to commemorate his memory. Some half a century later in 2007, Benazir Bhutto, the ex-premier of the country was shot dead at the same location, Liaqat Ali Park. It is not just the spot that was the target of the bloody chance occurance; Mohammad Mussadiq Khan, the doctor who did Bhutto’s autopsy was the son of Sadiq Khan, the doctor who had conducted Liaqat Ali Khan’s autopsy. They were both rushed to the hospital from the same place and declared dead upon their arrival, by doctors who shared a direct bloodline.

Tamara Rabi and Adriana Scott were both raised on Long Island, perfectly unaware of each other’s existence. One was adopted at birth by a Jewish family and the other by a Catholic family; their discovery of each other came twenty years later as they enrolled in university and started encountering people who claimed to have met them before; one contact led to another and when they finally met up, there was no doubt that they were both standing opposite their twin sister! They look exactly the same, share the same interests and were both born in Mexico and raised a few miles away from each other.

A rather touching and less tragic tale of incidence started with the shooting of the novel-based movie The Girl from Petrovka. Anthony Hopkins, before filming started, looked for a copy of the novel on Charing Cross street London before giving up and going to the train station to ctahc a train home. There at a bench was lying a forgotten copy of the novel. Years and years later, Hopkins met the author Gorge Feifer who informed him that many years ago he had lent his own personal copy to a friend who had forgotten it somewhere. When Hopkins produced the copy he had chanced upon, Feifer recognized it to be the one he had lost through is friend. Happy lost-and-found-tale, wouldn’t you say?

A historic co-incidence took place in Finland as two seventy-year old twins died on the same road, some hours apart and some kilometers away from each other on the same day. The first twin died as a result of being hit by a lorry near Raahe and some two hours later the police came to the scene of another accident to find his identical twin brother, dead as a result of hit by some other lorry. The police said that it is evident that the second twin had no knowledge of his brother’s death since they had not yet informed the family. Joined in birth and joined in death, this is a rare, never-before reported occurrence.

The creator of famous American characters like “Tom Sawyer” and “Hucklebery Finn”, Mark Twain (the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemes) was an American author and humourist. He had in his life befriended many a scholars, intellectuals and even presidents and politicians. Towards the later half of his life, Mark Twain suffered from deep depression as he lost his daughter, his wife and a few close friends. He is quoted as having said that “I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'(wikipedia.)
And strangely enough, that is exactly what happened. A day after Halley’s Comet came closest to earth, Mark Twain died of cardiac arrest in Redding, Connecticut. Was this a mere result of over-anticipation of death or an ironic stroke of fate, we will never know.

For above a century starting from 1840 to 1960, all the American President who had been elected in a year ending with ‘0’ were either assassinated or died of natural causes while serving their terms. This strange pattern was perceived early in the 1900’s and led to many astrologers predicting the assassination date of John F. Kennedy. President Reagan was expected to die during his term but he very narrowly survived an assassination plot. After him, George Bush completed his full term and retired alive, breaking the strange 20-year death cycle.

Talk of democratic dynasty! No other country has two twin brothers in the top two jobs of the State, let alone identical twins. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who accepted the ruling party’s proposal to make him the premier, acknowledged that there are certain problems associated with two brothers only the two top posts in the country. Rumours have it that there is now a rift between the powerful pairs on issues of economic policy and the much noted co-incidence might bring to front the problems anticipated by the prime minister.

Jason and Jenny Cairns-Lawrence are a working-class couple from West Midlands; and they have been spectacularly unlucky in their choice of holiday-location and holiday-timing. They were present in New York at the time of 9/11 attacks; they were there in London to see the panic that struck the city post the infamous London Underground bombings; and they were vacationing in Bombay India, just in time to watch the terrorists paralyze the city in wake of the seizure of Taj Hotel. Being in a position to comment on the way the cities reacted, they said they found that Bombay sprung back to its feet more quickly than either London or New York did, returning back to the normal pulse of its life. A very bizarre and a very unlucky co-incidence!

The son of Abraham Lincoln is not far behind in the title-race for most bizarre incidences! He has the distinction of being the only man who was either present at or close to the scene of assassination of three American presidents: President Lincoln (his own Father), President Garfield and President McKinley. He declined an offer to go to the theatre with his parents on the evening that President Lincoln was shot dead during the performance; he was the Secretary of State for War for President Garfield and had planned to travel with him when he arrived late to witness the shooting of the President; once again, he arrived late at Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, but just in time to hear the shot being fired at President McKinley. An unlucky and unwilling witness to all three assassinations, it is said that Robert Todd Lincoln had become averse to attending public gatherings towards the end of his life, out of his fear of encountering another attempt at presidential assassination.

Synchronicities are ‘meaningful incidences’. The number of similarities surrounding Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy’s lives, time in office, and their assassinations show a mind-numbing pattern of resemblance. Here are just a few of those synchronicities: Lincoln came to office in 1860, while Kennedy was elected for the same office in 1960; Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy and Kennedy’s secretary was called Lincoln; both their wives lost a son during their term in the office; they were both shot on Friday and both plotted against and killed by Southerners; their successors (more than a century apart from each other) were both called Johnson; Lincoln’s killer was born in 1839 and Kennedy’s in 1939; their killers were both assassinated before the trial! A little too many similarities, it is almost like history repeating itself in a perfectly synchronized manner.