16 Crazy Coincidences That Are Hard To Believe Actually Happened

A set of twins from Ohio who were separated at birth grew up without any knowledge of each other's existence. They lives did however share a number of strange similarities. They were both named James on their adoptions, they both grew up to be police officers, and both of them married women named Linda. But that's not all. Each had a son, one named James Allan and the other one named James Alan, and each also had a dog named Toy. Both brothers later got divorced, and both ended up remarrying women named Betty! (source: people)

Did Edgar Allan Poe own a time machine? Some people think so. How else could he have known about an event almost half a century before it happened? In his book called The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, the author describes how four sailors who survived the sinking of their ship were forced to eat a rather unfortunate cabin boy named Richard Parker. Although Poe claimed that the story was based on real events, that wasn't actually true. 46 years later however, a boat really did sink, and the members of the crew who were rescued were forced to eat a cabin boy in order to survive. The cabin boy's name? You guessed it - Richard Parker. (source: nytimes, seesouthampton)

Did the famous writer Mark Twain predict his own death? Well if he didn't then it was a major coincidence. The writer was born in 1835, when Halley's Comet was passing the earth. It only passes once every 76 years or so, but Twain predicted that he would die on its next passing. "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835," he said in 1909. "It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it." The writer died on the very day of its appearance in 1910. (americanliteraryblog, wikipedia)

Depending on how you look at it, Violet Jessup was either one seriously lucky lady, or she was one seriously bad omen. The stewardess and nurse was on the HMS Olympic when it struck the HMS Hawke, she was on board the HMHS Britannic when it sank after hitting a sea mine, and she was also traveling on the RMS Titanic when it sank after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. No wonder she later become known as Miss Unsinkable! (source: historybuff)

When Anthony Hopkins was preparing for his role in The Girl from Petrovka, he wanted to find a version of the book (written by George Feifer) so he could study it before filming began. But wherever he looked, he couldn't find a copy until one day, while sitting on the subway, he found a copy on the carriage in which he was travelling. But that's not the end, because when Hopkins later met the author, Feifer told him that he also didn't have a copy of the book. Why? Because he'd lent his last one to a friend, who had then accidentally lost it on the subway! (source: npr, dm)

The founder of the Ferrari company, Enzo Ferrari, died on August 14, 1988. Just a month later, on October 15, Arsenal footballer Mesut Özil was born. Take a look at their pictures side by side. Massive coincidence? Or proof of reincarnation? You decide!

The Simpsons has been known to accurately predict all sorts of things, but maybe their most impressive prediction of all (and also the most relevant right now...and depressing...) was guessing that Donald Trump would become president. We didn't see it coming. You didn't see it coming. But The Simpsons definitely saw it coming way back in the year 2000 (although the pictures featured here are from the 2015 episode). Either that or it's one seriously creepy coincidence...

Believe it nor not, Dutch cyclist Maarten de Jonge has escaped not one but two major plane crashes in his life. Not only was he supposed to be on board missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 before deciding to take a flight that departed an hour earlier; he was also supposed to fly on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the one that was shot down over Ukraine in 2014, before changing to a different flight in order to save money. (source: independent)

14 years before the Titanic sank, in 1898, Morgan Robertson, a fantasy writer from the US, write about a ship sinking in a novella called Futility. The ship in the book was called the Titan, but that's not the end of the similarities. For example, like the real Titanic, the Titan was described as unsinkable. They also both had insufficient lifeboats and they both collided with icebergs in the North Atlantic. (sources: titanic.wikia, historyonthenet, cruiselinehistory)