- Or maybe they all did?
These crazy coincidences changed from events happening or not and people surviving things or not. Do you think you know all these stories from this list?
- One passenger, J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, canceled a dinner engagement at the last minute
and boarded a different ship, even though he was scheduled to ride the Titanic. Others who planned to sail on the Titanic missed it due to minor scheduling changes. These random choices determined the lives of the people who otherwise would have died on the Titanic. - The final location of Washington, D.C. was reportedly influenced by informal negotiations and chance political compromises, including coin toss–like decisions over borders and rivers. These coincidences shaped the political geography of the United States, determining where power would be centralized.
- In 1898, Morgan Robertson wrote a novel about a massive, “unsinkable” ship called the Titan that hit an iceberg and sank. The similarities to the Titanic disaster 14 years later like the size, speed, and lack of lifeboat, were all uncanny coincidences that still unsettle historians. (Sounds a little like the writers of The Simpsons, no?) Do you think this is one of the most crazy coincidences?
- John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln met before the
latter killed the former. Booth and Lincoln were at the same event several times but never crossed paths. On one occasion, Booth stood close enough to shake Lincoln’s hand but didn’t. - The accidental discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1928 was such a wild coincidence. It all happened when he forgot to clean a petri dish before leaving on vacation. Mold contaminated the dish and killed surrounding bacteria. This coincidence led to antibiotics saving hundreds of millions of lives and completely transformed modern medicine.
- The assassination that triggered World War I happened due to an astonishing coincidence. After an earlier failed assassination attempt, Franz Ferdinand’s driver took a wrong turn in Sarajevo. By chance, the car stopped directly in front of Gavrilo Princip, who happened to be buying a sandwich. Princip seized the moment and changed global history due to the fatal food. What do you think of this as one of the crazy coincidences?
- Two Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both died on July 4, 1826, which is also the 50th anniversary of American independence. Adams’ final words were reportedly, “Thomas Jefferson survives,” unaware that Jefferson had died hours earlier.
- The Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944 depended on a narrow window of acceptable weather. German commanders believed bad weather made invasion impossible and relaxed defenses. A brief clearing allowed the Allies to land successfully, seeing that if the weather had not shifted at that exact moment, D-Day might have failed.
- Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was scheduled to travel by train in 1944, but a delay caused him to miss it. That train was later bombed by Allied forces. This is just another crazy situation where someone would have otherwise died if they had followed through with the plans they made for themselves.
- In 1944, a bomb intended to kill Adolf Hitler exploded during a meeting. Hitler survived, though, because the heavy wooden table leg accidentally deflected the blast. Had the bomb detonated unobstructed, World War I, and the Holocaust, might have ended months earlier with far fewer casualties. Is this the most wild of the crazy coincidences?
- Soviet officer Stanislav Petrov received computer alerts showing incoming U.S. missiles but he thought something was off. By coincidence, the system malfunctioned due to sunlight reflecting off of clouds. Petrov trusted his intuition and reported it as a false alarm, preventing a possible nuclear retaliation. This saved countless lives during the cold war in 1983.
- In 1588, England’s survival against the Spanish Armada depended largely on weather. Powerful storms scattered and wrecked Spain’s fleet after initial battles. England’s smaller navy benefited from this coincidence of nature, leading to Spain’s decline and England’s rise.
- In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte narrowly escaped capture
by enemy forces in Egypt because a guide took a wrong turn through the desert. That mistake delayed the pursuing troops just long enough for Napoleon to slip away, unfound. Had he been captured or killed, his rise to power and much of European history would be very different than it was. Did you know about this as one of the crazy coincidences? - Charles Darwin nearly didn’t board the HMS Beagle because his father initially forbade the voyage. The ship’s departure was delayed several times, giving Darwin time to get permission. Without these delays, Darwin might not have traveled and the theory of evolution could have taken decades longer to come out.
What do you think of all these crazy coincidences? Tell us something we don’t know in the comments!