Titan and Titanic 

Art doesn’t just imitate life — sometimes it anticipates it. Fourteen years before the RMS Titanic was built, the American Morgan Robertson wrote a novel called Futility or The Wreck of the Titan (1898) that prefigured the real ship’s destiny with remarkable precision.

Futility, 1898 Edition About the Titan

Morgan Robertson wrote a novel about the Titan published in 1898, titled Futility. His novel described the ship’s loss. It struck an iceberg and went down in April.

The Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912 and sank a little over two hours later at 2.20 a.m. on April 15, 1912. The novel was republished, after the Titanic sank, with the title Futility and the Wreck of the Titan. Some of the Titan’s statistics were changed.

John Rowland, Futility’s hero, is a disgraced former Royal Navy lieutenant, who’s a drunkard. After being dismissed from the Navy, he’s a deckhand on the Titan. Then ship hits an iceberg and sinks. There aren’t enough lifeboats. He saves a former lover’s daughter by jumping onto the iceberg with her. Rowland finds a lifeboat washed up on the iceberg and they’re rescued by a passing ship.

Similarities:

**In 1898 Morgan Robertson wrote Futility, The Wreck of the Titan, a novel of greed, pride and stupidity. It described the maiden voyage of a transatlantic luxury liner named the Titan. Although it was touted as being unsinkable, it strikes an iceburg and sinks with much loss of life.

**In 1912 the Titanic, a transatlantic luxury liner widely touted as unsinkable strikes an iceburg and sinks with great loss of life on her maiden voyage.

**The Titanic and the Titan were both triple-screwed British passenger liners with a capacity of 3,000 and a top speed of 24 knots.

**Both were deemed unsinkable; both carried too few lifeboats.

**And both sank in April in the North Atlantic after colliding with an iceberg on the forward starboard side.

**Both collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic due to excessive speed and both ships had too few lifeboats

**Both were launched in April and their disasters happened in the same month

**Both were the largest ship afloat. The Titan was described as one of man’s greatest works. The Titanic was deemed unsinkable and a wonder of its era.

**Both had a displacement of 45,000 tons

**Both had three propellers and two masts

Differences:

**Titan sailed from New York to Liverpool; Titanic, Southampton to New York.

**It was the Titan’s third voyage; Titanic’s first

**Titan was 800 feet long, weighed 45,000 tons; Titanic, 880 feet long, weighed 46,328 tons

**Titan had fifteen watertight compartments; Titanic, nine

**Titan had 40,000 horsepower; Titanic, 45,000 horsepower

**Titan’s speed, 25 knots; Titanic’s, 24 knots.

Titan and Titanic Coincidence or pure luck, you be the judge?

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Lincoln and J.F. Kennedy

Lincoln and J.F. Kennedy coincidences surrounding them-

Life

**Both presidents had 7 letters in their last name.

**Both were over 6' feet tall.

**Both men studied law.

**Both seemed to have lazy eye muscles, which would sometimes cause one to deviate.

**Both suffered from genetic diseases. It is suspected that Lincoln had Marfan's disease, and Kennedy suffered from Addison's disease.

**Both served in the military. Lincoln was a scout captain in the Black Hawk War, and Kennedy served as a navy lieutenant in World War II.

**Both were boat captains. Lincoln was a skipper for the Talisman, a Mississippi River boat, and Kennedy was skipper of the PT 109.

**Both had no fear of their mortality and disdained bodyguards.

**Both often stated how easy it would be to shoot the president. Lincoln supposedly said, "If somebody wants to take my life, there is nothing I can do to prevent it." Kennedy supposedly said "If somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it." Note that both these quotes are each 16 words long.

Death

**Both presidents were shot in the head, on a Friday.

**Both were seated beside their wives when shot. Neither Mrs. Lincoln nor Mrs. Kennedy was injured. Both wives held the bullet-torn heads of their husbands.

**In each case, the man was injured but not fatally. Major Henry Rathbone was slashed by a knife, and Governor John Connolly was shot.

**Lincoln sat in Box 7 at Ford's Theatre. Kennedy rode in car 7 in the Dallas motorcade.

**Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre. Kennedy was shot in a Ford product, a Lincoln limousine.

**Mrs. Kennedy insisted that her husband's funeral mirror Lincoln's as closely as possible.

The Assassins

**Both assassins used three names: John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. (It should be noted that Lee Harvey Oswald was known as just Lee Oswald prior to the assassination.)

**There are 15 letters in each assassin's name.

**Both assassins struck when in their mid-twenties. Booth was born in 1838, and Oswald was born in 1939.

**Each assassin lacked a strong father figure in his life. Booth's father died when he was 13 years old, and Oswald's father died before he was born.

**Each assassin had two brothers whose careers he coveted. Booth's two brothers were more successful actors and Oswald envied his brothers' military lives.

**Both assassins were privates in the military. Booth was a private in the Virginia Militia, and Oswald was a private in the Marine Corps.

**Both assassins were born in the south.

**Both assassins were known sympathizers to enemies of the United States. Booth supported the Confederacy and Oswald was a Marxist.

**Both assassins often used aliases. Booth frequently used "J. Wilkes" and Oswald used the name "Alek J. Hidell."

**Booth shot Lincoln at a theatre and was cornered in a warehouse. Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and was cornered in a theatre.

**Each assassin was detained by an officer named Baker. Lt. Luther B. Baker was leader of the cavalry patrol which trapped Booth at Garrett's Barn. Officer Marion L. Baker, a Dallas motorcycle patrolman, briefly detained Oswald on the second floor of the School Book Depository until he learned that he worked there.

**Both assassins were killed with a single shot from a Colt revolver.

**Both assassins were shot in a blaze of light-Booth after the barn was set afire, and Oswald in the form of television cameras.

Family and Friends

**Both presidents were named after their grandfathers.

**Both were born second children.

**Both married while in their thirties. Lincoln married at 33 and Kennedy married at 36.

**Both married dark-haired, twenty-four-year-old women.

**Both wives died around the age of 64. Mary Todd Lincoln died in 1882 at age 63 years and 215 days, and Jackie Kennedy died in 1994 at age 64 years 295 days.

**Both wives were known for their high fashion in clothes.

**Both wives renovated the White House after many years of neglect.

**Each couple had four children, two of whom died before becoming a teen.

**Each couple lost a son while in the White House. Willie Lincoln died at age 12 in 1862, and Kennedy's son Patrick died two days after his birth in 1963.

Politics

**Both presidents were elected to the House of Representatives in '46.

**Both were runners-up for the party's nomination for vice-president in '56.

**Both were elected to the presidency in '60.

Vice-Presidents

**Southern Democrats named Johnson succeeded both Lincoln and Kennedy (Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

**Andrew Johnson was born in 1808, and Lyndon Johnson was born in 1908.

**There are six letters in each Johnson's first name.

**Both Johnsons served in the military. Andrew was a brigadier general in the Civil War and Lyndon was a commander in the U.S. Navy during WW2.

**Both Johnsons were former southern senators.

**Both Johnsons had urethral stones, the only presidents to have them.

**Both Johnsons chose not to run for reelection in '68.

Some coincidences. Don't you agree?

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Cannibalistic Coincidence

In 1838, Poe’s only novel was published – The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Partway through the book, the crew of a ship called Grampus find themselves in a boat with no food or water.

They manag to catch a tortoise, but eventually, in order to survive, the crew draws straws to figure out which of them will be sacrificed to provide meat for everyone else. The death straw goes to a former mutineer named Richard Parker, who is then promptly stabbed to death; his head, hands and feet thrown overboard.

This keeps them alive a little bit longer, but the two remaining crew members are on the brink of death when they were finally rescued.

Here comes the twist-

In 1884, a yacht named the Mignonette left England, headed toward Sydney, Australia. The yacht wasn’t really made for trips around the world, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone when it sank in a storm. The four-man crew barely escaped in a lifeboat, but they definitely didn’t have enough provisions for survival. They did catch a turtle and eat it, but just like their counterparts in the 45-year-old Poe tale, they needed more if they were going to be found alive when a rescue boat found them.

Facing starvation after 16 days, Captain Dudley and his mates killed and ate the cabin boy. The 3 men were tried and found guilty of murder of the cabin boy, whose name was Richard Parker.

Creepy, isn’t it!

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The war begins in the front yard and ends in the front parlour-

At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Wilmer McLean (1814-1822) was a retired major in the Virginia militia. Too old to return to active duty, he made his living selling sugar to the Confederate Army. McLean’s misfortune was that his farm at Manassas, Virginia was located on the road between Richmond and Washington. McLean lived in the middle between the Confederate and Union capitals.

Needing a headquarters for himself and his staff, Confederate General P G T Beauregard decided to base himself in McLean’s cottage. In the first engagement of the war, Union artillery fired on the house, initiating what was to become the First Battle of Bull Run. One cannonball fell down the cottage chimney and exploded in the stewpot, requiring a revision of the General’s lunch plans.

McLean decided to relocate but took too long in doing so.

The Second Battle of Bull Run took place 28-30 August 1862 outside of his front door.

McLean relocated in 1863. He moved as far away as he could with the money he had, buying a property about 200 kilometres to the south at Virginia Hill, Virginia. The name of Virginia Hill was later changed to Appomattox Court House.

On April 9, 1865, the war came back to Wilmer McLean.

On that date Confederate General Rober E Lee surrendered to Lieutenant General Ullyses S Grant in the parlour of McLean’s house, effectively ending the Civil War.

After the surrender, members of the Union Army took the tables, chairs, and various other furnishings in the house as souvenirs, over McLean’s protests. George Custer was given the table on which the surrender document was drafted by Grant.

In 1867 McLean sold his house, unable to meet the mortgage payments, and returned to his house in Manassas McLean's Appomattox Court House home is now part of the Appomattox Court House National Historical Monument.

 McLean said this at the time of the signing of the surrender:

                               "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlour".

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Crossword Puzzles revealed D-Day Code Names in Advance 

During World War II the daily newspapers only consisted of a few pages but they were very popular. They gave the everyday news of what was happening in the fight against Hitler and the Nazis. But there was much more than just news to see - there were crossword puzzles to fill in the hours spent in air raid shelters.

The Daily Telegraph has always been popular for its crossword puzzle. One of the people who contributed crosswords during that time was Leonard S Dawe, the 54 year old headmaster of Strand School which had been evacuated to Bookham at the beginning of the second world war.

From early 1943 the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill and American President, Franklin Roosevelt met to plan the invasion of the continent overrun by Germany. It was decided that the sheltered Normandy coastline with its wide sandy beaches presented the best option for the surprise attack that was to be the D-Day landings. The assault was code-named Operation Overlord by Churchill himself. It was in early May 1944 that Eisenhower decided that D-Day would fall on 6th June 1944.

A huge security blanket had been thrown over all aspects of the operation, including the place and exact date of the landings, in order to maximise the element of surprise and to minimise casualties. But whilst some members of MI5, Britain's counter-espionage service, were whiling away their spare time in the month before the planned invasion by doing the Telegraph crossword, they noticed that vital code-names that had been adopted to hide the mightiest sea-borne assault of all time, appeared in the crossword.

The answer to one clue, 'One of the USA', turned out to be 'Utah', and another answer was 'Omaha'. But these were the very names, given by the Allies, to the beaches in Normandy where the American forces were to land on D-Day.

Another answer that appeared in that month's crosswords was 'Mulberry'. It was the name of the floating harbour that was to be towed across the channel to accommodate the supply ships of the invasion force. Then again another answer was 'Neptune', the code-name for the naval support for the operation. Most astonishing of all was the clue 'Big-Wig' to which the answer was 'Overlord', the code-name given for the entire operation!

The MI5 sprang into action - surely the crossword was being used to tip-off the Germans? Leonard Dawe was soon pulled in for the most intense questioning. Why, the officers demanded to know, without giving away the exact reason, had he chosen these five words within his crossword solutions?

"Why not?" was Dawe's indignant reply. He could choose whatever words he wanted.

He obviously eventually convinced them of his innocence and no more came of the matter but it was an amazing coincidence, not just in the words themselves, but in their timing.

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Did world war 1 start over a sandwich? 

It was the great flash point of the 20th century, an act that set off a chain reaction of calamity: two World Wars, 80 million deaths, the Russian Revolution, the rise of Hitler, the atomic bomb. Yet it might never have happened had Gavrilo Princip not got hungry for a sandwich.

Here the viewpoint is on the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the murder that set the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire on a collision course with Serbia, and Europe down the slippery slope that led to the outbreak of the First World War a month after Princip pulled the trigger on June 28, 1914.It is said: that if Princip had not stopped to eat a sandwich where he did, he would never have been in the right place to spot his target. No sandwich, no shooting. No shooting, no war.

Here is the tale-

It is the summer of 1914, and Bosnia has just become part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. A handful of young Bosnian-born Serbs decide to strike a blow for the integration of their people into a Greater Serbia by assassinating the heir to the Austrian throne. Their opportunity comes when it is announced that Franz Ferdinand will be making a state visit to the provincial capital, Sarajevo.

Armed with bombs and pistols supplied by Serbian military intelligence, seven conspirators position themselves at intervals along the archduke’s route. The first to strike is Nedeljko Cabrinovic, who lobs a hand grenade toward Franz Ferdinand’s open touring car. But the grenade is an old one, with a 10-second fuse. It bounces off the limo and into the road, where it explodes under the next vehicle in the motorcade. Although several officers in that car are hurt, Franz Ferdinand remains uninjured. To avoid capture, Cabrinovic drains a vial of cyanide and throws himself into a nearby river—but his suicide bid fails. The cyanide is past its sell-by date, and the river is just four inches deep.

The bombing throws the rest of the day’s plans into disarray. The motorcade is abandoned. Franz Ferdinand is hurried off to the town hall, where he is due to meet with state officials. Disconsolate, the remaining assassins disperse, their chance apparently gone. One of them, Gavrilo Princip, heads for Moritz Schiller’s delicatessen, on Franz Joseph Street. It’s one of Sarajevo’s smartest shopping destinations, just a few yards from the bustling through road known as Appel Quay.

As Princip queues to buy a sandwich, Franz Ferdinand is leaving the town hall. When the heir gets back into his limousine, though, he decides on a change of plan—he wants to call at the hospital to visit the men injured in the grenade blast. There’s just one problem: the archduke’s chauffeur, a stranger to Sarajevo, gets lost. He swings off Appel Quay and into crowded Franz Joseph Street, then drifts to a stop right in front of Schiller’s.

Princip looks up from his lunch to find his target sitting just a few feet away. He pulls his gun. Two shots ring out, and the first kills Franz Ferdinand’s wife, Sophie. The second hits the heir in the neck, severing his jugular vein.

The archduke slumps back, mortally wounded. His security men hustle Princip away. Inside Schiller’s deli, the most important sandwich in the history of the world lies half-eaten on a table.

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Intriguing, right! The big question remains, was it sheer coincidence that led to the occurrence of World War I?

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A novel that unsuspectedly described the spy next door

 When Norman Mailer began his novel Barbary Shore, there was no plan to have a Russian spy as a character. As he worked on it, he introduced a Russian spy in the U.S. as a minor character. As the work progressed, the spy became the dominant character in the novel. After the novel was completed, the U.S. Immigration Service arrested a man who lived just one floor above Mailer in the same apartment building. He was Colonel Rudolf Abel, alleged to be the top Russian spy working in the U.S. at that time.

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The same book-

The British actor Anthony Hopkins [who shot to fame as Hannibal Lecter] was delighted to hear that he had landed a leading role in a film based on the book The Girl From Petrovka by George Feifer.

A few days after signing the contract, Hopkins travelled to London to buy a copy of the book. He tried several bookshops, but there wasn't one to be had. Waiting at Leicester Square underground for his train home, he noticed a book apparently discarded on a bench.

Incredibly, it was The Girl From Petrovka.

That in itself would have been coincidence enough but in fact it was merely the beginning of an extraordinary chain of events.

Two years later, in the middle of filming in Vienna, Hopkins was visited by George Feifer, the author. Feifer mentioned that he did not have a copy of his own book. He had lent the last one - containing his own annotations - to a friend who had lost it somewhere in London.

With mounting astonishment, Hopkins handed Feifer the book he had found. 'Is this the one?' he asked, 'with the notes scribbled in the margins?'

It was the same book.

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King Umberto I meets his double-

There is a story that King Umberto I, the second to the last king of Italy, met his exact double while seated at a small restaurant in Monza.

As the tale is told, on July 28, 1900, the king was accompanied by his aide-de-camp, General Emilio Ponzia-Vaglia, when the entered the restaurant. When the owner took King Umberto's order, the two men were astounded as they gazed at one another. It was as if they were looking in a mirror. They were exact doubles.

Naturally the two men began discussing their striking resemblances and quickly learned that there were other odd similarities. Both men were named Umberto, both were born on the same day, March 14, 1844. Both men were born in Turin, and both married women with the same name: Margherita.

There is more. The restaurant owner said he opened his business on the same day that King Umberto was crowned King of Italy.

The strangest part of the story is that the following day, on July 29, 1900, the king, who came to Monza to attend an athletic event, was informed that the restaurant owner died a few hours earlier in a mysterious shooting accident. Only minutes after hearing the news, the king was assassinated by an anarchist as he was climbing into his awaiting carriage.

Is it wow or what?

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Mark Twain and Halley's Comet- 

Though known of for many years previously (recorded by the Chinese in 240 BC) Halley's Comet was named after Edmond Halley, he concluded in 1705 that the comet returned every 76 years. If you missed the last one, we'll all get a chance to see what all the fuss is about on July 28th, 2061.

Mark Twain is one of the most important American writers ever. Every kid rise with the stories of adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He was writer, humorist, anti-imperialist, abolition and emancipation supporter, and, maybe a psychic.

Many famous coincidences you have to take with a pinch of salt, but this one about Mark Twain and Halley's Comet does seem to stack up. He was born on November 30th, 1835 exactly two weeks after the comet's perihelion .

The difference is that mark Twain made a prediction in his autobiography, published in 1909. He wrote:

"I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'"

And, sure enough Mark Twain left this earth on April 21st, 1910 the day following the comet's perihelion. So, his prediction proved correct or a mere coincidence.