11 Amazing Historical Coincidences 

There were two different comics named Dennis the Menace with similar characters released on the same day in different countries (US and UK), whose authors had no knowledge of the other’s work.

*My father had a ton of interesting coincidences occur during his life. This is a rather long list but, among my personal favorites:* *My dad took me to my first professional baseball game when I was 12* (a double-header between the Cincinnati Reds and the New York Mets). Before we left, my aunt jokingly asked my dad if he thought he might catch a foul ball... my aunt then explained to me that, when he was younger, my dad went to a lot of Cincinnati ball games, and he would come home with a baseball that he'd caught when someone fouled it off. My dad laughed and corrected her to say, while it had happened several times, it hadn't been every single time, and we left for the ball park a few minutes later. My dad caught two foul balls that evening... one from EACH GAME. *About three or four years after that,* my dad (who had always been a good Samaritan), was driving on the interstate while headed for home. He saw a man broken down on the side of the interstate working on something under his hood. So, he pulled over to see if he could help (my dad never knew the first thing about cars, but he was great to have around for support -- fetching tools, etc.)The guy was working on a part and had almost had it completely removed, and he said before he left his mechanic back home had mentioned a few weeks back that this part was going bad and it might need replacement soon. He asked if our town had a dealership for his make (we did) and could he get a ride from my dad (absolutely). My dad drove him to the dealership, where they checked the part and confirmed that it was indeed dead. However, they would have to order the part from Little Rock (an hour away) and because it was so late, they wouldn't have it until tomorrow. So, the guy asked my dad if he could get a ride back to the car so he could get his belongings and could he get a ride to a hotel. My dad told him, _"Absolutely not!"_ He could have the ride back to his car, but he would then come spend the night with us (we actually did have plenty of room)... the guy graciously accepted. Now, I should mention that, my family has a really unusual last name (this is not the actual name but for the sake of the story let's go with an unusual substitute like, _"Obbendorff"._ Anyway, after they got the guy's belongings and were headed to our house, my dad realized that they hadn't introduces themselves, so my dad stuck his hand out and said, _"I'm Ron Obbendorff, by the way"._ The guy blinked a couple of times and asked, _"Are you messing with me?"_ My dad, now very confused said, _"No... what did it sound like I said that gave you that impression?"_ The man, now looking my dad square in the face said, _"Your name."_ ... _"What?.. I don't understand, why on earth would that bother you?"_ my dad asked. _"Because"_ the man said... _"that's MY name!"_ He then pulled out his wallet, got his drivers license and, sure enough, their names were identical, right down to the spelling. They also had the same middle initial, although their middle names were different. Anyway, they spent the rest of the night, drinking and talking about family trees and eventually discovered that they shared a great-great-great uncle (or something), hence the name. *This one is my personal favorite:* My mom worked for the federal government, and she had reached the level where, if you wanted to promote further, you had to transfer to Atlanta, Georgia. Now, back then, the agency she worked for, would send you and your family on a vacation to your new city and give you two weeks to do some house hunting before the move. So, that's what they did. The feds also supplied them with _per diem,_ so they ate for free the entire time. One evening, my dad went down to the lobby to hail a cab for a ride to the restaurant where they had planned to eat for dinner). Right as my dad stepped out front, a cab just happened to be pulling up with passengers inside who were about to be dropped off here at the hotel. So, in order to call dibs on the cab, my dad stepped forward to open the door and assist whoever was inside with getting out. Immediately after my dad opened the door, out stepped my dad's aunt and two of his cousins. They were taking a vacation and had come to Atlanta from California. None of them knew that their family had come here to Atlanta. So, in a city of more than a million people, my aunt had decided to use the same one my parents chose, and, of all the time to pull up in a cab, they picked the one where my dad had just come out to hail a cab. It's just bizarre to imagine how unlikely that coincidence was... yet, here they were. He had a few more but, this is already getting pretty long, and I don't want to keep boring you too many of them. I myself have rarely had a coincidence of any kind... although, there is one that's note worthy to mention: *I had taken a job in Texas,* where I was an on site liaison for my company with one of our clients. I worked in our client's office, but I was actually employed by a separate company (we were one of their vendors). Anyway, part of my job was to create an _ad hoc_ account whenever clients turned their vehicles in early. Normally, that was an automated process that our computer did whenever our client's computer sent us a file with their upcoming lease terminations (they were a car company, in case you hadn't guessed - and my company inspected the vehicles that were about to be returned at the end of their lease). An *ad hoc* request had been sent to me. Pretty quickly I noticed that the town this customer lived in, was my hometown (the one where my mom, dad and I was born). As I was creating the account, something about it was really strange, I could tell there was some kind of link, but my brain couldn't quite figure it out. I realized, as I looked at this customer's home address, that this was the very house my father had been born in. Now... I never learned much about my original hometown (we moved away when I was about six). About three or four years prior to this discovery, my dad had passed away; however, a few days before he died, we went for a drive through his (and my) old hometown (he had moved back there a few years earlier after he and my mom had split up. I was there because I was in the midst of an impending divorce and had come to stay with him in the meantime. That was why it took me a bit to figure out, I'd never lived in that town and the memory of that car ride was a bit fuzzy by this point, but once I read that address a few more times, it finally hit me. So... even my own coincidences involved my dad in someway. I'm telling you... the dude was magic. Like an ancient wizard or something.

He lived to 98?!! How long would he have lived if he hadn't been through 2 nuclear bomb explosions?

I really liked the takeaway about pattern recognition at the end of the video. I'm not sure I've seen that in other MF videos. It's a great addition and makes me feel like I learned something instead of idly filling 13 minutes. And I hope this comment makes you happy!

My dad's aunt and my mother's aunt were both nurses who served on the same hospital ship at the same time in WWII. Both women passed away before this connection was discovered so we don't know if the women were friends or could not stand each other, but they almost certainly knew each other.

I once read that Edwin Boothe was at a party in the 1880s and found himself drawn to a plaster cast of a pair of hands, plaster casts of hands was apparently a thing back then much like life and death masks, he touched and handled the hands and asked who they belong to, the host told him Abraham Lincoln. He put them down and quietly left the party.

The sun and moon appearing the same size is the most mind-blowing "coincidence" to me. It's almost unfathomable and seems too perfect to be true... no wonder creationism is so prevalent.

Separated twins story: A man about 40 who was a fireman won an award and there was a brief article in a magazine for firemen. Another fireman is told by coworkers who have read the article that the award winner looks just like him, and eventually he contacts the award winner. They were both adopted and it turns out they were twins. They arrange for one to travel to the other's home so they can meet, and an article about all of this runs in the magazine for firemen before they meet. While they are comparing notes on their lives there is a knock on the door and when it is answered there stands a third guy - he had missed the first article but saw the second and realized that they both looked just like him. Not twins, triplets. All firemen.

I'm sad to see Einstein and Pi Day didn't make the list this time :(

I got really excited when one of the items started with Galileo observing Saturn. I thought it was gonna be the coincidence I submitted, even though I knew that mine was probably too long a story to be a good list item. Turns out you just had a DIFFERENT Galileo/Saturn oriented coincidence.

The tiger’s name in Life of Pi is Richard Parker.

Justin, it is always a delight to watch your videos!

This is straight up trippy! Love it please keep it coming!!!!!

Oh wow, a Pig Mania shirt, that's hilarious.

I'm a primary school teacher in the Netherlands. A few years ago, we got a child from Peru. She was placed in a group according to her age. The day she arrived, we were confused. She looked exactly like one of her classmates. It turned out they were identical twins. Their parents divorced when the girls were still babies. They both didn't know they had a sister. One parent went to Peru and came back a decade later and happened to settle in the exact same village his ex had moved to.

Love your videos

Apophenia is fascinating. In his book “Humble Pi”, Matt Parker says “Don’t be surprised when it happens…be surprised when it happens to YOU!”

Perhaps Saturn is the highest planet because the whole dang thing's been hotboxed.

Nicely done.

8:54 thats the cleanest reading of gibberish Ive ever heard!

In hindsight I guess it was silly to assume this, but I thought for sure that they would mention how Bert and Ernie in Sesame Street were not in fact named after Bert (the police officer) and Ernie (the cab driver) from “It’s a Wonderful Life”

Some uh…interesting coincidences in my own life were discovered while writing a comment about what was originally supposed to be just two funny coincidences. 1.) My mom and I share a birthday 2.) In high school, I went to Germany as a language program exchange trip, and we discovered that my host mother ALSO shared our birthday 3.) My sister and my cousin technically weren’t born on the same day, but my cousin was born less than an hour after midnight the day after my sister’s birthday 4.) While I was in Germany, I ran into people I knew from my own home town outside of the Munich Hofbräuhaus 5.) I have multiple coincidences involving both family birthdays AND multiple involving my Germany trip 6.) One of those coincidences involves BOTH

My Best Frigate’s Wedding needs to happen

Great video

I love the surprise nail polish. :)

The human brain seems to have a tendency to see patterns even when they don't really exist. Where do you think conspiracy theories come from?

Your shirt gave me flashbacks. We had pass the pig but never knew how to play it.

I love your blue nail polish!

10:00 The idea that Mars might have 2 moons was based on an idea that because Jupiter had 4 moons, Earth had 1 moon and Venus has no moon that Mars should have 2 moons. This was at a time when there was still a lot of supernatural explanation behind the understanding of how the universe worked and people were looking for patterns. This idea that Mars should have 2 moons is probably what lead Kepler to his conclusions, and what led Swift to his. The fact that Mars does, in fact have 2 moons is just pure luck. Look at a large enough group of people and you can say, "Someone here was born on May 15th. and you will almost certainly find one born on May 15th.

We keep finding coincidences between events, people, things. Coincidence?

Krystallnacht: A large American fast-food chain entering Germany had an ad campaign based on a calendar that listed important days in history without explanation. They ran an ad campaogn about enjoying their product on celebration of this day. Quickly retracted.

I'm mental AND I use floss. coincidence? I don't think so!

3:18 There once was a man from Nantucket... He drew the short straw and said...

had heart surgery when I was 12. There was another Erin in the same room, she had the same birthday, our moms had the same name, and we had the same last initial. They ended up moving me out of that room because they didn't want to do the wrong procedure on the wrong kid.

I didn't notice the finger nail polish til 11:07

I like you. Great presentation.

Love from México Justin 🇲🇽🙋‍♂️

Pass the Pigs.

My family name is fairly unusual - there's only about 2500 of us in the world. My father attended a conference for college-level educators in his field, and had left a bunch of the literature passed out at the event in his hotel room when he returned home. The hotel contacted the conference organizers to try to properly return the materials and ... this is how we met a guy who lived on the far side of the country who was in the same field as my dad and happens to have the same name. (They had mistakenly sent the stuff to him.)

Gotta love a good coincidence tbh

Pass the Pigs shirt. Nice one dude!

I had to rewind this like 4X before I noticed another coincidence lol . My initials are J.D. as well but when he said the 4th and 10th letter of the alphabet….my birthday is 4/10 also🤯 wtf🤣🤣🤣

9th of November is 9/11 in the European layout

I love how your nails match the background 💅

I like imagining Shakespeare putting his name in the king James.

Distracted by the fact the host is a Dodd like my grandma lol

the twins probably fooled as all, as they are communicating 1 way or another.

When you say a million twins are born in the states each year does that mean a million sets of twins or a million people who make up half a million sets? Asking for a friend.

Is that a pass the pigs 🐖 shirt?

I once had a therapist with who was obsessed with birthstone. I asked him what mine was. He asked my birthday. Somehow I thought he was going to say February 3 which is my birthday. That was his answer.

My initials are J.D. too!🙋🏾‍♀️

Bailey's beads are the multiple bright spots of light which actually appear through the mountains of the moon. The diamond ring is the moment when the moon moves just past the edge of the sun and there's a single bright, larger than the beads light which lasts a few seconds until the moon moves on and we see what looks like a golden arc. There's a point when the "ring" looks like the "diamond" is sitting on it, making it resemble the diamond ring we imagine from the phrase. Also, the moon is only 400 times smaller and closer than the sun on average. Its orbit it slightly elliptical, hence there are full and "annular" eclipses, the latter being when the moon is at its further distance, so it doesn't quite cover the sun. However, when it's at the exact middle point of the eclipse, there is a complete "gold ring", sans diamond, which more resembles a wedding band. A full eclipse is more like an engagement ring. Either way, based on the age of the moon and Earth, we are very lucky to live at a time when the moon is where it is. However, it's only receding at 3.8 cm per year, so it's going to be able to do this for quite some time yet.

I like Justin! Easier to understand, more pleasant to watch his talk. Okay, I like Austin too but he talks so FAST.

If you like this vid on coincidences please read, COSMOS AND PSYCHE by Richard Tarnas. About the correlations between our planets and human history.

I wanna know low long it took you to pronounce that word at around 8:55

Two comments: One: your nails match the blue circles on the background! :D And two: sometimes genetics can be pretty powerful and it's not something that people should just outright dismiss, because it's up to us as individuals to decide what aspects of our DNA are important to us and which are not, and not for someone else to come in and just dismiss outright because DNA is just a cell. (People believing my DNA is irrelevant are the reason why I was contractually obligated to never know my biological father and our relatives because when my mom purchased his sperm it was "JuSt a CeLl" as though it's not half of every single one of the trillions of human cells in my body that supposedly I'm the one allowed to make decisions about, except when it comes to how relevant to me half of them are) If someone's DNA matters to that person, it matters to that person, and they're allowed to think it does, since it's their body, not anyone else's. Still reeling from, among many other odd similarities, my biological father and I having the same favorite play, of all things. I mean it definitely speaks to how good Arcadia by Tom Stoppard is, lol, but FAVORITE, for BOTH of us, who'd never met or known any of the same people and grew up and live on opposite sides of the country.

You don't remember all the times you walked down the street and didn't bump into your long lost brother.

Haven’t watched the video, but COVID has to be on the list right…?

Pass the pigs!

Cute nail polish. :)

This guy's voice sounds familiar. Has he hosted a different RU-vid channel?

I don't believe the twins both had a dog named Toy

Erin is a good host. But, not gonna lie, this guy aught do more he's the best host they have.

Do you know that "Star crossed" means "doomed to die?"

The end speach is 😘👌🏽

I thought tortoises were the land-based version of a turtle. Wouldn’t a tortoise be hard to find at sea?

Where is John Green?

Please "sub" in every week. Thank you.

This took a weirdly preachy turn at the end.

You are soooo much better tan Erin. Please stay.

0:55 “Anthropomorphic battleships falling in love” Have I got a game or 2 for you. Actually if it’s with each other you might just go with Azur Lane. If it’s with their captain then go with Kantai Collection.

Whatever happened to Elliot?

I guess rule 39 doesn't apply to these :D

Not judging, just curious. Why the blue fingernails?

Was he talking about azur lane or Kantai collection?

Any Life of Pi fans in the comment section? Makes sense now

Every time you use a glottal stop rather than a “t”, baby Jesus cries.

Fourth but I'm here

1st!

Second!

From 1952 through 1976, every time an American League team won the World Series in the year of a presidential election, the Republican candidate was was soon elected, and a National League win always preceded a Democrat being elected.

Can anyone else see the content of Africa on that backdrop/door/whatever it is over his left shoulder, the colors almost correspond to my terrible knowledge of African geography and the two white areas on either side hug the shape like the Atlantic and Indian oceans. I had to watch the video twice because I was too distracted with looking at Africa. They should look into better set designs, the shelves look fine enough but that backdrop is way too busy and distracting.

This all sucks 😢

I have already heard all of these. What a coincidence! Not really, though. Maybe it's just why i don't follow this channel.

These were recycled from other RU-vid videos.😑

Bring the girl back she is easier on da eyes

Why the hell are your nails painted blue?

GESS WAT? I WALK RITE INTO STORES WITHUOT MASK ON AN GET AWAY WITH IT AN U CANT STOP ME HAHA NANA NABOOBOOO