We’ve all had moments where we pause to think “What are the odds?” Coincidences happen large and small and whether you believe it to be wild happenstance or part of a broader pattern, there is no denying there are things stranger than fiction.

A pair of twins from Ohio were separated at birth and adopted into separate lives. However, the outcome of their lives had some striking similarities that are made all odder because some of the parallels are just pure chance and remarkably unpredictable.

Edgar Allen Poe was the author of a book called The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. In the book (spoilers ahead) the author describes how four sailors survive the sinking of their ship and survive by eating their cabin boy, Richard Parker.

Long before John Wilkes Booth assassinated the 16^th president of the United States, his brother Edwin saved Lincoln’s son from death. Robert Todd Lincoln was leaning against a stopped train in New Jersey when it started to move.

Stephen and Helen Lee were flipping through old family photos at their New York engagement party when they discovered Stephen’s late father and Helen’s mother had nearly gotten married in Korea in the 1960s.

A friend of James Dean, Alec Guinness, saw Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder and found it “sinister,” so much so that he told Dean that if he got into the car who would dead it “this time next week.” Seven days later, Dean was in a fatal accident in the car.

In 2014 there were two tragic plane crashes that involved Malaysian Air flights. The first flight was shot down over Ukraine by three Russians and one Ukrainian, killing all aboard the plane. The second plane disappeared somewhere over the Indian Ocean and has never been recovered.

Novelist Anne Parish was walking along the Seine in 1929 when she stopped at a book stall to browse the book selection. She discovered an old favorite Jack Frost and Other Stories and decided to buy it for one franc.

The episode, entitled Bart to the Future sees the character Bart seeing into his future. He sees that his sister Lisa becomes the first straight female president and Trump is her predecessor. At the time, Trump was a real estate developer and author of Art of the Deal.

Three young men, Robby, David, and Eddie were separated at birth by a New York psychologist in 1960 as part of a “nature versus nurture” study. In 1980, two of the young men attended the same university by chance and were later contacted by the third brother after their coincidental meeting was publicized.

An incredible story on its own, 80-year-old Xu Weifang of China saved an eight-year-old boy from drowning despite his recent injuries and advanced age. This was not the first time that Weifang had saved a drowning child, which is very bizarre as most of us will not save a boy from drowning.

Most are familiar with the cartoon character Dennis the Menace, the mischievous young boy and his dog, Ruff. The cartoon was launched in March of 1951, and uncannily enough, another cartoon of the same name launched in the same month and year across the Atlantic.

A woman named Violet Jessop was a nurse and ocean liner stewardess who was dubbed “Miss Unsinkable” after surviving not one, not two, but three life threatening incidents aboard a ship.

An estimated 21,000 people contributed to the building of the Hoover Dam, according to the United States Bureau of Reclamation. Of that number, 96 deaths occurred on the job site. Among the first recorded was J.G. Tierney who drowned in 1922 while conducting a geological survey with a colleague.

In 2001, a 10-year-old girl named Laura Buxton released a red balloon from her front yard. On the side of the balloon, she had written “Please return to Laura Buxton” alongside her address. A strong wind took it away.

This lottery “coincidence” may ring a little false as four-time winner of Joan Ginther has a Stanford Ph.D. graduate studied statistics and may have found a way to stack the odds in her favor.

Mark Twain, the famous American author and humorist was born in 1835, the same year that Halley’s Comet made its first appearance. The comet made a second appearance in 1910, the same year of Twain’s.

Theoretical physicist, author, and cosmologist Stephen Hawking was born on the 300^th anniversary of Italian astronomer, Galileo.

Considering that the odds of you being killed by a meteor are 1 in 1,600,00, the odds of a four-and-a-half billion-year-old free flying meteor would slam into the Commette family’s home is cosmically surreal.

While preparing for a role in the film adaptation of The Girl from Petrovka, American actor Anthony Hopkins set out to read the book, yet could not find a copy in any store. Then, while sitting in a London Tube station, he noticed a copy of said book that someone had left behind. When he opened it, he discovered that the book had been signed by the author, George Feifer.

Michael Dick had not seen his estranged daughter in over 10 years when he began to search for her again. Lisa had moved to Suffolk, England so Michael reached out toa local newspaper there and asked for them to publish a current phot of his and his other two daughters.

In June of 1940, Soviet archaeologists uncovered the tomb of Tamerlane in modern day Uzbekistan. Tamerlane viewed himself as Genghis Khan’s heir and was a Turco-Mongol conqueror, as well as the founder of the Timurid Empire in Persia and Central Asia.

By the end of the first World War, an estimated one million British lives had been taken. Yet miraculously, without any intention or planning, the first and last recorded casualties have graves that face one another only 15 feet apart from each other.

Paul and Esther Grachan had been seeing each other for a short time when Paul asked Esther to be his girlfriend. That day, while purchasing a sandwich, Paul noticed a dollar bill with the name “Esther” on it. He kept the bill and decided to frame it and give it to her as a gift. Esther was “speechless” and asked him to ask her about it later.

Tsutomo Yamaguchi was present for both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in Japan on August 6, 1945. Yamaguchi fled to Hiroshima in search of safety in Nagasaki only to witness yet another flash of white light that would cover half of his body in burns from the radioactive ash.

The dying Aboriginal language of Mbabaram in Australia shares the same expression as the English word “dog.” The tribal word has no connection of derivation from the latter, stunning linguists.

Fred and Lynette Dubendorf were walking on the beach picking up trash when they noticed a small bottle washed on the shore with a piece of paper inside. They uncovered the vows of another couple, Melody Kloska and Matt Behrs, who had recently wed.

Amanda Birch was speaking with her writing professor at the University of Rhode Island when the professor mentioned that she lived in a small Vermont town. Birch excitedly shared that her mother had been raised in said town.

Finnair flight 666 departed from Copenhagen and landed in Helsinki (HEL) on Friday the 13^th. There are a lot of conspiracies and mythology surrounding the numbers 666 as well as Friday the 13^th, so this flight going to “HEL” was one for the books.

Two sets of identical twins had been split up at birth and raised as fraternal twins in Bogota, Columbia. A colleague of Jorge, one of the twins, had a chance encounter with William, Jorge’s biological twin. Shocked by the likeness between the two, the colleague showed Jorge a photo of the William via a Facebook page.

Aimee Maiden and Nick Wheeler were looking through family photos for their upcoming wedding and discovered that they had unknowingly taken their first photograph together as children, over a decade before they met.

Robert Morgan wrote The Wreck of the Titan, Or Futility in 1898, 14 years before the Titanic would inevitably sink to the ocean floor.

Identical twins Helen Mae Cook, and Clara Mae Mitchell did everything together since they were born, and were incredibly close. Those close to the duo were not shocked that when Clara died of a heart attack at the age of 83, Helen died within just a few hours.

Roberto Clemente of the Pittsburgh Pirates made baseball history when he became the first Latin American player and 11^th in the entire league to reach 3,000 hits in 1972.

Royce Burton, a professor at a New Jersey University, was telling his class a story that took place in 1940, back when Burton was a Texas Ranger in the Rio Grande. He had become disoriented while climbing out of a canyon and lost his balance as he reached the top.

World War One was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28^th, 1914. The car he was traveling and subsequently assassinated in had a license plate with the numbering A lll 118.

Walter Summerford was struck by lightning three separate times throughout his life and then again four years after his death when a bolt of lightning struck his grave. Considering the odds of being struck by lightning each year is around 1 in 500,000, this is quite odd and miraculous.

Three of the first five U.S presidents died on July fourth, known as American Independence Day. Two of those deaths occurred on the same July fourth within hours of each other. The once friends turned political adversaries John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both passed away on July 4^th, 1826, on the 50^th anniversary on the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Two American presidents, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy were both killed from gunshot wounds to the back of the head on a Friday, right before a holiday celebration (Lincoln was killed right before Easter, JFK on the eve of Thanksgiving).

Okay try to follow me with this coincidence. “Here was I like a psalm” is an anagram for “William Shakespeare.” The 46^th word in Psalm 46 in the King James Bible is “shake” and the 46^th word from the end is “spear.”