Sometimes coincidences are exactly that: random events that seem freaky but have no causal connection. Then again, many of us look to coincidences for a deeper meaning in life.
When you are searching through all of human history, you are bound to find some weird coincidences. Here are a few that we find ultimately bizarre beyond simple explanation.
The Left-Handed American President.
We’d like to think that we elect our politicians on credentials alone, but there are some patterns to the people we elect (in America, at least). For example, we prefer presidents with light eyes. It’s true, only 5% of our presidents have had brown eyes.
While most people have brown eyes, and the eye color thing is strange in itself, only 10% of the population is left-handed, but over half of the last 14 presidents were left-handed. In fact, many of the presidential candidates were left-handed as well.
In 2008, both Barack Obama and John McCain were southpaws, and every major presidential candidate in the 90’s were as well, including Bush I, Clinton, Perot, and Dole.
So while we talk a lot about the 1% running America now, what about the 10%…of lefties?
The Curse of the Dragon.
Martial arts legend Bruce Lee is infamous for his cursed family. In fact, a scene in his final movie accurately predicted the freak accident that would kill his son two decades later.
In short, Lee’s character in Game of Death is killed when a real gun is substituted for a prop gun. Brandon Lee would be killed many years later when a prop gun on the set of his film, The Crow, misfires.
What’s even stranger is the prophetic scene in the movie Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (released just two months after Brandon’s death) in which Bruce Lee’s character battles a metaphorical demon that has been haunting his family. At one point during the fight, Brandon’s character distracts the demon, after which the monster pursues the boy.
The thing is that Brandon was still alive when they shot this scene, meaning that the whole metaphor of the Lee ‘family demon’ coming after the younger Lee next would come true right before the release of the film.
Yet Another JFK Assassination Theory.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy has made conspiracy theorists out of some of the most unlikely candidates. This particular one comes from the mouth of the president himself, mere hours before his assassination.
Former White House aides Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David F. Powers, writing in “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye”, noted that the Kennedys were greeted in Dallas by a full-page anti-Kennedy ad in the Dallas Morning News: “bordered in black, like a funeral notice.”
Well, JFK knew clearly how hostile Texas was. He tried to reassure wife Jacqueline that everything would be fine with these oddly prophetic words: “We’re entering nut country today. But, Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?”
As we all know now, the president was murdered that very afternoon by a rifle fired from the window of the Texas School Book Depository. Also, it turns out that firing a weapon from a building’s window is an extraordinarily rare way to assassinate a world leader. So, why would he have made this specific reference?
The Apocalypse of Constantinople.
The historic fall of Constantinople stands at a crux of history. Most historians credit this moment as the end of the Middle Ages.
It just so happens that this monumental event coincided with a partial lunar eclipse. This is strange because of a longstanding prophecy which said: “Constantinople would always endure provided that the moon, in its full circle, did not give a sign in the sky.” Given that the moon was an important symbol intertwined into the fabric of Constantinople’s tradition, it must have been a pretty frightening coincidence to everyone inside the city to see it disappear while the attackers laid siege outside the walls.
Despite this prophetic sign, Byzantine defenders continued their brave defense of Constantinople in the face of the Ottoman horde. But it is one particular terrified account of what happened after the eclipse that is apocalyptic. According to Barbaro, the skies opened up and, for the next week, the city was besieged with “whirlwinds and terrible storms,” “thunder and lightning with clouds, and a violent rain with severe hail,” and “drops huge and red, similar in size and appearance to a bull’s eye, fell as tears.”
These happenings sound overly dramatic, but may have scientific credibility behind them. According the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the phenomena described by Barbaro may have been the result of a large volcanic eruption in the South Pacific. It was so large, in fact, that it could have caused apocalyptic-seeming weather events halfway across the world.