"Coincidences" are familiar to all of us. They can involve startling conjunctions of events, such as chance meetings with old friends, or coincidences of personal habits or of anniversaries. Coincidences play a larger part in out lives than we realize, they have the potential to change lives. The world is filled with astonishing occurrences of coincidence that defy explanation. Are these incredible true stories of mere chance or the hand of fate?
There is a famous quote, "A coincidence is when God preforms a miracle and decides to stay anonymous."
These are one of the most astonishing coincedences:
The stories of identical twins' nearly identical lives are often astonishing, but perhaps none more so than those of identical twins born in Ohio. The twin boys were separated at birth, being adopted by different families. Unknown to each other, both families named the boys James. And here the coincidences just begin. Both James grew up not even knowing of the other, yet both sought law-enforcement training, both had abilities in mechanical drawing and carpentry and each had married women named Linda. They both had sons whom one named James Alan and the other named James Allan. The twin brothers also divorced their wives and married other women - both named Betty. And they both owned dogs which they named Toy. Forty years after their childhood separation, the two men were reunited to share their amazingly similar lives.
In Detroit sometime in the 1930s, a young (if incredibly careless) mother must have been eternally grateful to a man named Joseph Figlock. As Figlock was walking down the street, the mother's baby fell from a high window onto Figlock. The baby's fall was broken and both man and baby were unharmed. A stroke of luck on its own, but a year later, the very same baby fell from the very same window onto poor, unsuspecting Joseph Figlock as he was again passing beneath. And again, they both survived event.
While American novelist Anne Parrish was browsing bookstores in Paris in the 1920s, she came upon a book that was one of her childhood favorites - Jack Frost and Other Stories. She picked up the old book and showed it to her husband, telling him of the book she fondly remembered as a child. Her husband took the book, opened it, and on the flyleaf found the inscription: "Anne Parrish, 209 N. Weber Street, Colorado Springs." It was Anne's very own book.
It seemed the obvious thing to do for a 10 year old. Laura Buxton was at her grandparent's golden wedding anniversary and there was a helium filled balloon going spare. So she wrote on a label her address with the message 'Please return to Laura Buxton' and released the balloon to fly off in the sky. Laura was in Staffordshire, England. Ten days passed and a farmer in Milton Lilbourne, Wiltshire pulled a balloon out of the hedge that separated his fields from his neighbour's house. He noticed the name of Laura Buxton. As this was the name of his neighbour's daughter he handed over the balloon straight away, thinking it must belong to her. But this was a different Laura Buxton, though she was also ten years old, but she lived 140 miles away from the girl who had released the balloon. Laura Buxton from Milton Lilbourne got out her pen and wrote to Laura Buxton in Stoke-on-Trent Staffordshire. As this was such a coincidence their parents allowed them to meet up ... and then it got a lot more of a bizarre coincidence. The girls, both tall for their age, were the same height and both decided to wear pink sweaters and jeans for their first meeting. Their hair was brown and they both wore it in the same style ... but there's still more!Both girls had three year old black Labrador Retrievers dogs and grey pet rabbits. They also had guinea pigs, which were the same color and even had the same orange markings on their hindquarters.
