1. The Mermaid ship
www.sonofthesouth.net
The Mermaid ship was sailing for four days before it wrecked due to bad weather. An intense storm stroked the ship and it broke apart. The crew could do nothing but to swim to the closest land, where they were saved by the ship Swiftsure. But, their new ship wrecked after the lost battle against a strong current. Their lives were unsafe once again, but not for long. Only eight hours after the wreck, Governor Ready ship saved them once again. It had already 32 people on it and full cargo of timber, but saved the whole crews of The Mermaid and Swiftsure. Nevertheless, that wasn’t the end of their problems. Governor Ready was caught by fire, which spread easily thanks to timbers. The ship was abandoned; The Comet saved their lives hours later. That was the ship which finally got them back to Sydney. Bizarre but true, The Comet sank five days later. The crew was saved by the ship Jupiter, which, amazingly, wrecked 12 hours after. The ship The City of Leeds saved their lives, and finally the bad luck finished.
2. Wilmer McLean
www.army.mil
Wilmer McLean lived peaceful life in Manassas, Virginia when the Civil War erupted. His hometown is on the road between Washington DC and Richmond, VA, the capitals of Union and Confederate respectively. So the battle that is considered as start of the war, The Battle of Bull Run, happened on that road, just in front of McLean’s house, because his house was used as a Confederate headquarters. With his house being shot all the time, he decided to move further in Virginia. The strange coincidence is the fact that the war began in his house, but ended in his new one. Four years later, Union’s General surrender in McLean’s house. He has said: “The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor.”
3. Edgar Allan Poe
www.medchrome.com
“The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket” is the only complete novel of the one of the greatest American writers. It’s a story about a ship wreck, after which few people survived and wait to be saved on an opened sea. Because they have nothing to eat, they decide to draw straws and the loser will be eaten. The unlucky guy was the cabin boy Richard Parker. The coincidence happened 46 years later, when The Mignonette sank in the sea. Few people saved their lives by lifeboats and had nothing to eat. They drew straws to decide who will be eaten. Strange, but true, it was the cabin boy Richard Parker, but this time in real life.
4. Morgan Robertson
www.cruiselinehistory.com
This is a story that you could already read on this site, but it can’t be avoided. Writer Morgan Robertson in his mediocre novel predicted the famous sinking of Titanic 14 years before it really happened. In his book he tells a story about an unsinkable ship Titan, which sinks in his maiden voyage between United States and England, on April night in North Atlantic. Very few people were saved because there were a small number of lifeboats due to the overconfident constructors – just like it really occurred 14 years later in real life with real ship.
5. Mark Twain
www.userweb.port.ac.uk
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. He was born in 1835, a year when Halley’s Comet passed by Earth. In 1909 he said: “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.’ You guess, he died next year, on 21 April 1910 of a heart attack, only one day after the comet’s closest approach to Earth.
6. Oregon Lottery Numbers
www.oregonlottery.org
Oregon’s newspaper The Columbian announced Oregon’s Lottery winning numbers every week. But, on 28 June 2000 they managed to do so in advance. However, that wasn’t some successful prediction. Actually, they announced Virginia’s Lottery winning ticket numbers 6-8-5-5 by mistake. To be the situation not just a mistake but a strange one, the same numbers were drawn by Oregon’s Lottery the very next week.
7. King Umberto I
www.royal-portraits.blogspot.com
King Umberto I of Italy reigned in last 23 years of 19th century. On 29 July 1900 he had a dinner in the city of Monza. Later it turned out that the owner of the restaurant looks just like him and has the same name. Also, their wives’ names were identical. To be even more bizarre, the restaurant was opened on the same day with King’s inauguration. The next day King Umberto finished his ruling with Italy because he was shot by anarchists. The last coincidence – restaurant owner Umberto was shot, too.
8. Prediction of Internet Revolution
www.masternewmedia.org
In the middle of the Cold War, in 1969, few people who believed that world won’t be destroyed by nuclear weapon created a video which gives an image of a future world. In that world people shop from home, pay bills from home, communicate with other people and so on from a global net which they christened, believe it or not, Internet. It was a couple of decades before the Internet revolution.
9. Major Summerford
www.alltopmovies.net
Major Summerford was a British officer who retired the army because of injury. He was hit by lightning which paralyzed him from the waist down. He moved to Vancouver, where he used to fish. Unfortunately, the tree he was sitting while fishing was struck by lightning and paralyzed his right side. However, he managed to recover and was able to take walks to the local park. But his luck was never here. During one of his walk, he was struck by lightning that paralyzed his whole body. He died two years later. The unlucky man was buried but still he couldn’t deflect lightning away from him. You guess, his cemetery was hit and the tombstone was destroyed.
10. Hernan Cortes
www.gamespot.com
Mayan calendar is very popular in recent time due to predictions of world’s end. However, it’s full of predictions. One of them was that on a certain date a pale-faced man-god Quetzalcoatl would come to help them to repossess the city of Tenochtitlán. On that date, in 1519, conquistador Hernan Cortes arrived in Mexico and got his status of God by Aztecs, who believed that he will assist them to capture whole Mexico. However, they understood that actually they assist him in capturing Mexico, but it was too late.
