Coincidence? I Think Not! 12 Bizarre Historical Twists

0:00 Speaker 1: Hey, hey, curious minds, Welcome back to the Strange History Podcast. I'm your host, Amy, and today we're diving headfirst into the weirdest corners of history. And not just any history. I'm talking the wait, what kind the ones that make you go that can't be real but somehow totally are. If you're new here, welcome, You're in for a ride. And if you're a returning listener, Hi again, you little weirdo. And I mean that lovingly. You know we love a good mystery around here. Today's episode it's all about historical coincidences that are so bananas they'll make you question whether reality is glitching.

0:40 Speaker 1: So go ahead, grab your drink, pet your cat, put your phone on silent, and let's get into twelve truly bizarre moments in history that are just way too perfectly weird.

0:52 Speaker 2: Hey, Strange history lovers, my name is Dan and I will be doing a bit of narration on the podcast. Amy is paying me in homemade baked goods. No judging please. The Hoover Dam's spooky symmetry.

1:07 Speaker 1: Okay, this one gave me chills. When they started building the Hoover Dam back in the early nineteen twenties, The very first death on the site was a guy named J. G. Tierney. Poor guy drowned on December twentieth, nineteen twenty two. Now fast forward thirteen years to the day, December twentieth, nineteen thirty five. The last person to die during construction Patrick Tierney, his son, same date, thirteen years apart. Both father and son died working on the same project. That's not just tragic, that's horror movie level timing, like the dam was keeping score or something.

1:47 Speaker 2: The most synchronized twins ever.

1:50 Speaker 1: So in Ohio, two identical twin boys were adopted by different families after being separated at birth. Neither family knew about the other. But here's where it gets into the twilight zone. Both adoptive families named their sons James. One became a security guard, the other a deputy sheriff, so kind of the same vibe. Both married women named Linda, then both got divorced. Then both married women named Betty like really Betty. Each had a son named James Allen. They drove the same Chevy automobile, smoked the same brand of cigarettes, and vacationed at the same beach in Florida.

2:31 Speaker 1: They didn't meet until they were thirty nine at that point. It's not even coincidence. It's just fate doing a weird flex.

2:38 Speaker 2: The bullet with a personal vendetta.

2:41 Speaker 1: Henry Ziegland, a man in Texas in the late eighteen hundreds, breaks up with his girlfriend. She's heartbroken and sadly ends her life. Her brother, understandably furious, tries to shoot Henry. He fires the shot but misses. The bullet lodges in a tree behind Henry, so Henry lives. Years later. Henry's like, I want this tree gone, and he doesn't just chop it down. He uses dynamite as one does. The explosion sends the exact same bullet flying, and it hits Henry in the head. That time it doesn't miss.

3:15 Speaker 1: That's not just karma. That's karma with a sniper rifle and a long attention span.

3:21 Speaker 2: Lincoln and Kennedy history's favorite echo.

3:25 Speaker 1: You've probably heard this one, but it never gets old. The Lincoln Kennedy coincidences are chef's kiss weird. Lincoln was elected in eighteen sixty, Kennedy he was elected in nineteen sixty. Lincoln's VP and eventual successor was Andrew Johnson, and he was born in eighteen oh eight. Kennedy's VP and successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, born in nineteen oh eight. Both were assassinated on a Friday, both shot in the head. Both killers had three names fifteen letters. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald.

4:01 Speaker 1: Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and fled to a warehouse. Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to a theater. It's like history just hit copy paste, changed a few names, and called it a sequel.

4:15 Speaker 2: The book that predicted the Titanic.

4:18 Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety eight, author Morgan Robertson writes a novella called Futility. It's about a massive ocean liner called the titan Yeah, not the Titanic, but close that was considered unsinkable. Guess what happens. Yep, it hits an iceberg in April and sinks. Fourteen years later, the Titanic sets sail. It's huge, it's unsinkable, it doesn't have enough lifeboats. But wait, the ship hits an iceberg in April, and yep, it goes down, sinks like a stone. Robertson's swore it was just imagination, but man that is some suspiciously specific fiction.

4:59 Speaker 2: The baby dry Yes, I said, Baby Dropper.

5:02 Speaker 1: Detroit, nineteen thirties. A guy named Joseph Figlock, real person, not a cartoon character, is sweeping an alley when a baby falls out of a fourth story window lands right on him. Both survive, thankfully, and then get this. A year later, in the same alley, another baby falls out of a window onto Joseph Figlock again, and they both survive again. I don't know what's more surprising that he survived two surprise babies or that babies in the nineteen thirties were just casually falling out of windows.

5:39 Speaker 2: One tree, two wars, same family.

5:43 Speaker 1: During World War One, a British soldier narrowly avoids death when a dudshell smacks into a tree instead of well him. He's so grateful to the tree he carves his name into the bark. Fast forward to World War Two. His son, also a soldier, finds shelter behind that same tree. He sees the carving and oh my gosh, he finds his dad's name. It's like the tree was like, Hey, I got you, guys, generational trauma. I am your leafy therapist.

6:13 Speaker 2: Frane Selac literally too lucky to die.

6:18 Speaker 1: Fraine Celac, a Croatian music teacher, might be the luckiest or most targeted by fate. Man alive, he survives a train crash that kills seventeen. A year later, he's ejected from a crashing airplane and lands safely in a haystack. Then he survives a bus crash two separate car explosions, gets hit by a bus again, nearly gets hit by a truck, and then, as if the universe was like okay, okay, we get it, he wins the lottery. Like this man didn't just dodge death, he sprinted past it and flipped it the bird.

6:54 Speaker 2: Edgar Allan Poe time traveler.

6:57 Speaker 1: In eighteen thirty eight, Poe writes a novel called The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pim. It includes a shipwreck, a group of survivors, and a guy named Richard Parker who gets eaten fictional story. Then, in eighteen eighty four, the real life yacht Mignonette sinks. The survivors you guessed it, end up eating the cabin boy. His name, Richard freaking Parker. Like what kind of psychic seafood nightmare did Poe tap into.

7:28 Speaker 2: That one taxi in Bermuda.

7:31 Speaker 1: The scene is set in Bermuda. A guy on a moped is hit by a taxi dies tragically. One year later, his brother, riding the same moped down the same street, is hit by the same taxi driven by the same driver carrying the same passenger. At that point, that moped needs to be exercised or just thrown into the ocean.

7:55 Speaker 2: Founding Fathers sink up one last time.

8:00 Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were like that odd couple who went from bestie's to rivals and back to bros. They both played massive roles in founding the US, both served as president, both retired around the same time, and then on July fourth, eighteen twenty six, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, they both died hours apart. Adam's last words were supposedly Thomas Jefferson survives, except Jefferson had actually died a few hours earlier. It's like they planned one last synchronized mic drop Founding Fathers, but make it dramatic civil war.

8:44 Speaker 2: The house it wouldn't leave alone.

8:46 Speaker 1: Wilma McLain just wanted some peace in quiet in eighteen sixty one, the First Battle of bull Run literally exploded in his front yard. Cannonballs, chaos, the works. So he moves away all the way to Appomattox, Virginia. Nice quiet town until four years later when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in yep, McLean's living room. The war started in his front yard and ended in his parlor. His exact words, the.

9:17 Speaker 2: War began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor.

9:21 Speaker 1: I mean, come on, that man just could not escape the plot. So there you go. Twelve times the universe decided to be extra weird. Whether it's a psychic poet, a bullet with a memory, or the founding Fathers doing one last patriotic high five from beyond the grave. History has a wild sense of humor. If you had fun today, don't forget to follow. Leave a little love in the reviews, or send this to your friend who always dominates trivia night. Got a strange history nugget of your own, Slide into my inbox.

9:52 Speaker 1: You might just hear it on a future episode.

9:55 Speaker 2: Until next time, Stay curious, stay weird, and remember sometimes the past is stranger than fiction, and occasionally it drops a baby on your head. And now I am off to collect my baked bribery goods that Amy baked. It's the only way I would do this. We are friends, but not that good of friends. Just sayin