While some coincidences are weird in a movie-ish way, there are some that are so genuinely unsettling that it’s hard to believe that they’re real, but they are.
A morning that kept repeating
Wenman Wykeham-Musgrave’s tragic story began on September 22, 1914, when he was just 15 years old. He was aboard HMS Aboukir near the Hook of Holland. Out of nowhere, a German submarine, U-9, hit the boat, forcing him off the boat and onto HMS Hogue instead.
But then the same thing happened. Yes, the exact same boat was torpedoed, too, so he made his way onto HMS Cressy. Can you guess what happened next? It was also torpedoed and went down, meaning this boy survived three ship sinkings in one morning.
Too many thirteens
Thirteen has been an unlucky number for a long time, and it seems that Apollo 13 proved all those superstitions right. It had the number in its name, for starters, and launched on April 11 at 19:13 UTC, or 13:13 in Texas.
Then, two days later, the second oxygen tank blew up while the ship was around 200,000 miles from Earth. The date that happened? April 13. That’s way too much of a coincidence, honestly.
A date already on the building
It seems that the Pentagon was built on bad luck. In 1941, the War Department desperately needed a big new office building, so they found an area of land 296 acres big in Arlington, Virginia. It was only meant to be temporary.
The weird thing is, the building’s construction began on September 11, and exactly 60 years later, on September 11, 2001, the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened. American Airlines Flight 77 crashed straight into the Pentagon, causing part of it to collapse.
An album with a strange name
That’s not all for 9/11, as there were quite a few weird coincidences surrounding that dreadful day. One of them involves the band I Am the World Trade Center, which released an album called Out of the Loop in July 2001. That doesn’t sound all that strange, right?
But take a look at the tracklist, and you’ll see that the eleventh track of the album is called ‘September.’ It’s pretty creepy, and while it is just a coincidence, that doesn’t make it any less chilling.
A town with two matching stories
In May 1817, 20-year-old Mary Ashford went out dancing in Erdington, near Birmingham, England. She never made it home because she was murdered, likely by a man named Abraham Thornton. 157 years later, the same events seemed to happen again.
A 20-year-old woman named Barbara Forrest went out dancing in the same area and was murdered, too, this time by a man named Michael. His last name? Thornton. Each man was a suspect in each woman’s death, and each man was charged before being acquitted.
A seat decided in pieces
The Day the Music Died had a lot of weird coincidences with the seating. To start with, Buddy Holly chartered the plane only because he wanted to avoid another cold bus ride. Waylon Jennings gave his seat to J.P. Richardson, The Big Bopper, because Richardson was sick.
The only reason Ritchie Valens was on board was that Tommy Allsup lost his seat to him in a coin toss. Jennings actually jokingly told Holly, ‘I hope your old plane crashes.’ That’s exactly what happened.
Three places no one plans to be
Mason Wells is another man who went through quite a few different traumatic events. He was near Boston in 2013 and witnessed the Boston Marathon bombing. Then, two years later, he was in France when Paris was attacked in November 2015.
In 2016, Wells was injured by the Brussels Airport bombing, suffering burns and other injuries that forced him to go to the hospital. Three terrorist attacks, all before he’d even turned twenty years old.
A village and the dreams afterward
October 21, 1966, was a terrible day for the Welsh village of Aberfan. It was the day a pile of coal waste slid down into the village and right into Pantglas Junior School, killing 144 people, 116 of whom were children. But that’s not the strangest part.
Turns out, many local people had dreamed of the disaster before it happened, including 10-year-old Eryl Mai Jones, who told her mom in October 1966 that she’d dreamed of ‘something black’ lying over her school and destroying it. She was later one of the victims.
A copy met the original
The plan with Cap Trafalgar involved taking a German passenger liner and turning it into a World War I raider before making it look like a regular ship. To be specific, they made it look like the real ship Carmania, taking off one funnel and painting the others to match.
In 1914, the fake Carmania actually ran into the real Carmania near Trindade Island, Brazil. What were the chances? The two boats fought, and the fake ship went down.
A name said too soon
Catherine Eddowes was a woman believed to be the fourth victim of serial killer Jack the Ripper. On September 30, 1888, she was released from the police station and gave a fake name to the officers. She said she was called Mary Ann Kelly. Jack killed her a few hours later.
Fast-forward to November, and the next woman, believed to be Jack’s final victim, was killed. Her name was Mary Jane Kelly. It’s not the exact same name, yes, but it’s creepy enough that they were both technically called Mary Kelly.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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