Trivia 14:
Crazy Coincidences



The car in which Archdude Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated is now in a Vienna museum. The archduke's assassination started World War I. Since then, the same car was in nine accidents before it was taken off the road.

In 1664, 1785, and 1820, three unrelated men who were the sole survivors of three different disasters at sea were all named Hugh Williams.

Brothers Erskine L. Ebbin and Neville Ebbin of Bermuda died exactly one year apart after being struck by the same taxi, driven by the same driver, and carrying the same passenger.

A bank customer who tried to cash a check in Monroe Township, NJ, was arrested when the teller turned out to be the Linda Brandimato to whom the check was made out.

A customer presented a stolen credit card to cashier Diane Klos in an Irvington, NJ, department store. Klos recognized that the card was stolen immediately, since it belonged to her. Klos and her boss chased the thief to the street, where she was apprehended by two policeman.

While Stephen Law of Markham, OT, was hunting in five feet of water for a ring lost by his father, he found a topaz ring his grandmother had lost 41 years earlier in the very same lake.

In 1938, a hurricane damaged or destroyed 6,923 churches along the East Coast of the U.S., but spared all the synagogues and Episcopal churches.

Identical twins Mark Newman and Jerry Levey, adopted by different families five years after they were born in 1954, did not meet again until 1986. Both grew up to be volunteer firefighters and found each other entirely by chance while attending a firefighters' convention.

Snow fell three times in New England in July of 1816, fulfilling a prediction in that year's The Old Farmer's Almanac that had been inserted as a prank.

Moses Carlton, a wealthy ship magnate of Wiscasset, ME, thew his gold ring into the Sheepscot River and boasted, "There is as much chance of me dying a poor man as there is of ever finding that ring again." A few days later, he found the ring in a fish served to him in a restaurant. Carlton's fortunes changed almost immediately. President Madison placed an embargo on American ships, Carlton went bankrupt, and, sure enough, he died a poor man.

The schooner Susan and Eliza was wrecked in a storm off Cape Ann, MA. Aboard was one of the ship owner's daughters, Susan Hichborn, on her way to her wedding in Boston. All 33 passengers perished, and no trace of the ship was ever found, except for a trunk bearing Susan's initials and containing her possessions. The trunk washed ashore at the feet of her waiting fiancé.



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