Status: True (kind of, though I wouldn't use the word 'foretold')
2spare.com offers a list of the
Top 15 Strangest Coincidences. It's an interesting list (Thanks for the link, Kathy!), and as far as I can tell all the coincidences they list are basically true. Or, at least, they've all been widely reported, and I haven't been able to find any false statements in them yet. (I didn't analyze all of them that closely.)
But one coincidence I found particularly interesting, that I hadn't read about before, involved an American writer named Morgan Robertson who in 1898 wrote a novella titled
Futility. It told the story of a massive ocean liner named the
Titan that hits an iceberg while crossing the Atlantic and sinks. Fourteen years later, in real life, the
Titanic hits an iceberg while crossing the Atlantic and sinks. Very weird.
The coincidence was definitely not lost on Robertson who immediately had his story republished after the
Titanic sank, with the new title
Futility and the Wreck of the Titan. Apparently he tweaked the republished story a little bit to make the similarities even more striking. (He altered the dimensions of his fictional boat to make it more like the
Titanic.) But the biggest similarity of all (
Titan vs.
Titanic) he didn't need to tweak. That was legitimately in the original story (which can be read
here).
This coincidence is discussed on
skepticwiki, which points out that the story is often used by believers in the paranormal as evidence of premonition. But as they point out:
"The most startling coincidence above all is the similarity in names between Titan and Titanic. In 2003, Senan Moloney wrote an article for the online resource Titanic Book Site where he finds three occasions before the writing of "Futility" where a ship named Titania sank at sea, and one of these bore certain similarities to the eventual Titanic disaster. It could be that, inspired by this disaster (or all three) Morgan Robertson chose to base his ocean liner's name on their names."
Still, it is a very striking coincidence. But sometimes strange coincidences do happen. That doesn't make them paranormal.
In fact, 2spare.com leaves off its list what I find to be the most amazing coincidence in history: that when the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620, one of the first native Americans they met not only spoke fluent English, but had actually lived in England for a number of years and had crossed the Atlantic numerous times. (He was more cosmopolitan and well-traveled than they were.) To me this is just amazing that out of the entire huge continent the Pilgrims managed, by sheer luck, to find the one guy,
Squanto, who spoke English. It's like traveling halfway across the galaxy, landing on a planet, and discovering that the inhabitants speak English. (Of course, that happens in
Star Trek all the time.) And without Squanto's help the Plymouth Colony probably wouldn't have lasted through the winter, and American history itself might have taken a very different course. But it was just a coincidence. Nothing supernatural about it (though the Pilgrims definitely viewed it as an example of divine favor).
Comments
I don't think Squanto being the first person the colonists met was that much of a coincidence. Ships from Europe were not unusual sites along the coast at that time, and anyone from Squanto's tribe who saw one sending a landing party went and got him because he could speak their language. And trade. The only unusual thing here was that the people got off the boat and stayed.
The whole Plymouth Rock thing is kind of a myth, too. No one in the colony ever mentioned anything about landing on a rock. The stone that now carries the myth just happened to be in the vicinity of the colony, and not necessarily where they landed (which is not known).
It's not that big of a coincidence.
Welcome back, Hairy.
Amizing. I hope I stay male after this post!!!!! ;o)
interesting comparison of the original book, its revision, and the actual Titanic disaster at Futility Comparison
Didn't you notice we just had a full moon?
What a guy!
"London, Sept. 16
Yeah, that's what my Uncle Parkinson told me too.
Then coincidentally it actually happened a few years later with one person ending up in a lifeboat with the same name as the story character.
Does anyone know of this tale or what story I am talking about? I would like to read that Poe story again.
"Narrative of A. Gordon Pym" sound very familiar. I will have to check that out.
http://www.theastralworld.com/other_mysteries/cannibalisticcoincidence.html says:
Cannibalistic Coincidence
In 1838, Edgar Allan Poe published his only complete novel - yeah, I didn't know that either. It was entitled The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. The story is about a young man named Arthur Gordon Pym who stows away aboard a whaling ship. It's a strange kind of story (it's Poe) full of adventure and mis-haps and they eventually become shipwrecked. As 4 survivors, clinging to the hull, are about to die of thirst and starvation, they draw lots to see who would be killed and eaten. The loser is a man named Richard Parker.
In 1884, a real-life shipwreck happened involving a yacht named the Mignonette which was on its way to Australia. There were 4 survivors - 3 of whom were charged with murder of the fourth. Facing starvation after 16 days in a dinghy, Captain Dudley and his mates killed and ate the cabin boy. The 3 men were tried and found guilty of murder of the cabin boy, whose name was Richard Parker.
(Alan Vaughan - Incredible Coincidence)
Your comparison would be more accurate had you said that it's like sendig a colony halfway across the galaxy, landing on a planet that has been traded with and pillaged by Earthlings for a hundred years, and discovering that some of the inhabitants speak English. I wouldn't call that a coincidence.