Life is full of strange coincidences. Some are so strange that it seems that some higher power is at work. Some people don't believe in coincidence at all and if you ask them about it, they will say that everything happens for a reason. I never liked this saying, especially when something happened to me that I didn't care for and a close relative would say "Everything happens for a reason." As a matter of fact, I used to get downright mad when that was said to me. I can't explain why some events occur that are so unusual that the odds of them happening are less than winning a national lottery, I can only cite them to you, the readers.

Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain
Photo Source: Library of Congress

I think that most people have heard of Samuel Clemens. He was also known as Mark Twain and wrote such books as the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Sam was born in a strange sounding place called Florida, in Missouri. This is not the coincidence that I am talking about however. He was born on November 30, 1835. This date would mean nothing to most of us, but to astronomers it means the day that Halley's Comet appeared. If you think that this is a coincidence, he died on the day that Halley's comet appeared again. Clemens had predicted his death, when he made the statement that he was born on the day a comet appeared and would probably die when it came back. You just can't make up this kind of stuff.

When one is checking out coincidences he just can't help coming across all of, what I like to call, forced coincidences. People like to look at presidents, for example and try and get things to match in a pair of presidents lives. Sometimes it almost sounds reasonable while sometimes it is almost laughable. I certainly don't consider something a coincidence if you are going to tell me that the third letter in one name matches the third letter in another, yet you see this kind of stuff all over the internet. I may have exaggerated a little, but I think you see my point.

Earth
Photo Source: NASA

Do you know what is the biggest coincidence? The biggest coincidence is what we are standing on, it is the Earth. The Earth has just the right mixture of gases to form an atmosphere that is friendly to life. It has just the right amount of gravity, it is just at the correct distance from it's sun for a livable temperature, the sun is just the correct mass to provide this temperature, it just happens to have water, which is conducive for life, it's soil just happens to be fertile soil, so that we can grow crops, it just happens to have an atmospheric shield to keep out most cosmic rays and the solar wind. The Earth just happens to be at the end of a spiral arm of the Milky way, away from the black hole in the center. What are the chances of this happening again? Who knows?

There is a story that is told about King Umberto I of Italy. The King had decided to try a different restaurant and he picked one that was also called Umberto's. He sat at a table with one of his aides and the owner of the restaurant, finding out that the king was there, ran over to his table to greet him. To both their astonishment, they looked exactly alike. There was the king looking into a picture image of himself. He asked the owner to sit down and started to ask him questions, only to find out that even more coincidences existed. Both the owner of Umberto's restaurant and the king had been born in Turin, Italy. They both were born on the same day. On the day that the king married Queen Margherita the restaurant owner had married a lady named Margherita. The day King Umberto was crowned king, the restaurant owner had opened Umberto's restaurant. The king felt that he had to talk more to this man and invited him to attend an athletic event the next day. On the day of the event the king received word that the restaurant owner had been shot dead. The king attended the event that day, where he was shot dead. Now this is what I call a coincidence.

Here is a strange coincidence that I know about personally. One of the people I worked with decided to go on an exotic vacation. He went to a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean. On the island was a bar, so he decided to go in and have a drink. When he got inside, there was one of the people that he worked with sitting at the bar. I would love to know what the odds of this happening were? By the way, neither had talked about going on vacation at work, so neither knew where the other was going.

As the population on Earth increases, the chances for some types of coincidences increase. For example, can you imagine the number of people that have the same birthdays? You could fill a country with them. Just look how the chances for a fellow citizen of a country meeting another fellow citizen outside of their country have gone up. Can we really call it a coincidence anymore when one person from say the U.S. meets another from the U.S. in England? I don't think so. Clearly it has to be a lot more unusual that that to be called a coincidence.

Sometimes you have to wonder if something is coincidence or premonition. One example of this was a play that was written in 1885, that was about a ship, the Caroline, that sunk and had only one survivor and his name was Robert Golding. The day the play opened, a ship named the Caroline sunk and guess who the sole survivor was? Yes Robert Golding. Another famous coincidence was a book published by Edgar Allen Poe that told of 4 men adrift in a lifeboat that had to eat one of their party to survive. They ate the cabin boy, Richard Parker. About 40 years later 4 men were adrift in a boat and killed and ate their cabin boy to survive. His name was Richard Parker.

You have to admit that this kind of stuff really makes one wonder what is going on.