Thomas Jefferson and John Adams

US Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were both involved in drafting the US Declaration of Independence, signed on 4 July 1776. Hence, 4 July became Independence Day. Jefferson was Adam’s Vice President until he became President in 1800. They were the last surviving members of the revolutionaries. Both died on 4 July 1826, fifty years after the Declaration of Independence.¹ Independence Day is 4 July (4/7) as 4 + 7 = 11. This date occurring two times is like 11:11 happening.

Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler

Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler were the only leaders who conquered nearly all of Europe. There is a series of parallels between them. Both came to power by a coup that ended an unstable republic. Napoleon and Hitler both turned Europe into a battlefield. They both ventured into Africa and faced defeat in Egypt. They both waged war on two fronts. Both attacked Russia while not having defeated Great Britain.

Napoleon was born on Corsica, an independent island that became part of France. Napoleon became the leader of France. Hitler was born in Austria, an independent country that became part of Germany. Hitler became the leader of Germany. On 9 November 1799, Napoleon came to power after a coup to overthrow the government. Hitler was involved in a failed coup on 9 November 1923.

The Titanic

The Titanic supposedly was unsinkable because it had sealable compartments. Nevertheless, the ship sank on its maiden voyage after hitting an iceberg. In 1898, Morgan Robertson wrote the novel Futility, describing the maiden voyage of a transatlantic luxury liner named the Titan. Although touted as unsinkable, it struck an iceberg and sank with much loss of life. In the book, the month of the wreck was April, the same month the Titanic sank. The similarities are striking:

• The ships had similar names.
• Both were the largest craft afloat and seen as the greatest of the works of men.
• The sizes were roughly the same: the Titan was 45,000 tons, and the Titanic was 46,000 tons.
• Both ships were deemed unsinkable.
• Both had a triple screw (propeller).
• Both vessels had a shortage of lifeboats.
• Both struck an iceberg: the Titan, moving at 25 knots, struck an iceberg on the starboard side on a night in April in the North Atlantic, 400 nautical miles from Newfoundland, while the Titanic, moving at 22½ knots, struck an iceberg on the starboard side on the night of 14 April 1912 in the North Atlantic, 400 nautical miles from Newfoundland.
• Both ships sank with much loss of life.

After the demise of the Titanic, Robertson’s apparent clairvoyance attracted attention. He claimed the similarities were the result of his knowledge of shipbuilding. His expertise, however, doesn’t explain the similarity in names.

In April 1935, the cargo vessel Titanian sailed in the North Atlantic. A sailor claimed he felt uncomfortable as the ship’s name was similar to Titanic. For that reason, he sounded a warning. He claimed to have done this before an iceberg was in sight. He added that the vessel stopped just in front of an iceberg. According to reports, the Titanian had run into some damage during the voyage.²

One hundred years later, the luxurious Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia sank after hitting a rock. The accident happened on Friday, 13 January 2012. The ship had thirteen decks. Some passengers claimed the Titanic theme ‘My Heart Will Go On’ played in a restaurant when the accident happened.³ Shortly afterwards, on 27 February 2012, another cruise liner of the same parent company, the Costa Allegra, ran into trouble near Seychelles.⁴ This repetition within a short timeframe makes the incident peculiar.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand

On 28 June 1914, the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in his car in Sarajevo. His act triggered World War I. World War I ended with the Armistice of 11 November 1918. 11 November is a peculiar date as it is 11-11. A few strange coincidences relate to the assassination. Franz Ferdinand had premonitions of an early death, and the assassination succeeded after a series of mishaps. But the most peculiar coincidence was the licence plate number A III 118 of the car that drove Franz Ferdinand to his appointment with destiny. It contains a possible reference to the Armistice of 11 November 1918 (11-11-18).⁵

D-Day

D-Day happened on 6 June 1944 (6/6/44). That date has double digits, like 11 November (11-11). The Allies had selected 5 June 1944 for their invasion because there was a full moon that night. They postponed it one day because of the weather. There was no agreement on the start date of World War II, while the Battle of Stalingrad took more than two months, so D-Day was the most important single day in World War II. D-Day means Decision Day. D is the fourth letter of the alphabet, so Decision Day (DD) can refer to (19)44, the year D-Day happened.

Normandy invaded England in 1066 AD, while D-Day was on 6 June or 6/6. In the ensuing Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, King Harold II of England died while trying to repel the invasion. That happened a few days after his forces had killed King Harold III of Norway, who also had invaded England. On 14 October 1944, the German General Rommel committed suicide after having overseen the construction of the German coastal defences intended to repel the Allied invasion.

Roman de Rou is a chronicle written around 1170. It covers the history of the Dukes of Normandy. It mentions that Roger the Great de Montgomery commanded parts of the invading forces in 1066. Other sources do not confirm this account.⁶ During the 1944 invasion, Bernard Montgomery commanded portions of the invading army. That is most peculiar indeed, and there is more.

On 11 March 2010, the founder of the Dutch political party D66, Hans van Mierlo, died. The name D66 stands for Democrats 66 and refers to the year 1966 because the party was founded on 14 October 1966 by 44 people.⁷ The name can refer to D-Day, making the founding date and the number of people involved in establishing the party rather intriguing. D-Day was on 6-6-44, so D66 could mean D-Day 6-6. Van Mierlo died in 2010, 44 years after starting D66 and 66 years after D-Day. Van Mierlo had just married on 11 November 2009 (11-11-11 after compressing numbers).

The numbers 66 and 44 and the date 14 October turn up in this scheme. And 11-11 is part of it too. It was the day Hans van Mierlo married. 11 November is the date of the Armistice ending World War I. And the Vikings founded Normandy in the year 911. This number is closely related to the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11. On 9 November 1989 (9/11 European notation), the Berlin Wall fell. On 11 September 2001 (9/11 American notation), the terrorist attacks took place.

The assassination of Martin Luther King was on 4 April 1968, one year after he spoke out against the Vietnam War on 4 April 1967. Remarkably, both dates are 4 April (4/4). On 5 June 1968, another high-profile political assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy took place in the United States. He died the next day, on 6 June (6/6). Both incidents happened in the United States in 1968 and point to D-Day (6/6/44). 6 June was also the release date of The Omen, the most ‘cursed’ film in history. And so there might be a relationship between these events in case history is a script someone wrote.

John F. Kennedy’s assassination

‘We’re heading into nut country today,’ said President John F. Kennedy to his wife on the morning of 22 November 1963. She had just seen an advertisement from the John Birch Society in the Dallas Morning News suggesting that he was a communist. The border of the advert was in the black of a funeral announcement. ‘But, Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?’⁸

A few hours later, someone shot him from a window with a rifle. The assassination date, 22 November (22/11), consists of two multiples of eleven, which is a bit odd, like the date of D-Day and the date of the Armistice ending World War I. There are some parallels between John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln:

• Lincoln entered Congress in 1846 and Kennedy in 1946.
• Lincoln became President in 1860 and Kennedy in 1960.
• Both Presidents concerned themselves with Civil Rights.
• Both presidents did get a bullet in the back of their heads in the presence of their wives.
• Lincoln was shot in the Ford Theatre, while Kennedy encountered a bullet while being in a Ford Lincoln. That certainly is the most curious part of the coincidence.
• They were both murdered on a Friday.
• In both cases, an assassin assassinated the assassin before he could face trial. That is an odd repeating coincidence, like 11:11.
• Lincoln’s successor was Andrew Johnson, born in 1808, while Kennedy’s successor was Lyndon Johnson, born in 1908.⁹

Longer lists are circulating with some false claims. Sceptics have argued that these similarities are mere coincidences and that similar parallels exist between other US presidents. Wikipedia even named it an urban legend, while it is not, as that means the story is false. That both murders took place on a Friday is indeed not remarkable. But the murder of Lincoln taking place in the Ford Theatre and the assassination of Kennedy happening in a Ford Lincoln is noteworthy, as is the time difference of precisely one century that recurs three times. And there are links with other peculiar coincidences.

Kennedy’s brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was shot a few years later. He died in 1968 on 6 June (6/6), just after the murder of Martin Luther King on 4 April (4/4). That is odd because of the coincidences surrounding D-Day (6/6/44). These incidents are part of a series of premature deaths, accidents, and other calamities involving members of the Kennedy family called the Kennedy Curse.

The son of President Lincoln, Robert Todd Lincoln, also had his share of remarkable coincidences. A few months before John Wilkes Booth murdered his father, Edwin Booth, the brother of John Wilkes, saved him when he was travelling by train. During a stop, he stepped back on the crowded platform to let others pass, pressing his back against a stopped train. When the train began to move, Lincoln fell onto the tracks. Booth hauled him back onto the platform. The Booth family and the Lincoln family were not neighbours, which makes the incident even more remarkable. Robert Lincoln was in the vicinity when the murder of his father occurred. He was also present at the assassination of President Garfield in 1881 and the assassination of President McKinley in 1901.¹⁰

The Kennedy assassination took part in a series of premature deaths in office of American presidents elected in years starting with a zero, called the Curse of Tippecanoe or Zero-Year Curse. From William Henry Harrison to John Kennedy, every President elected in a year ending in zero died in office. It ended with Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, who survived an assassination attempt. First Lady Nancy Reagan reportedly had hired psychics and astrologers to protect her husband from the curse.¹¹ George W. Bush, elected in 2000, also survived an assassination attempt.

Houston, we have a problem

We associate the number 13 with bad luck. Bad luck haunted the voyage of Apollo 13. The launch was on 11 April 1970 at 13:13 CST from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The departure time combined with the mission number looks like a daring attempt to challenge fate. Possibly, the people at NASA thought, ‘We are scientists and don’t believe in this superstitious nonsense.’ And bingo! Fate took vengeance. On 13 April, an oxygen tank exploded. The event enriched the annals of history with the famous quote, ‘Houston, we have a problem.’ Mission control aborted the lunar landing. The crew made it back alive.¹² That finally was a stroke of luck.

The fall of the Berlin Wall

The fall of the Berlin Wall was the pivotal event marking the end of the Soviet Empire, the so-called Empire of Evil. The dismantling of this wall began on 9 November 1989 (9/11 European notation). On 11 September 2001 (9/11 American notation), a terrorist attack was another pivotal event in the war on terror. It ended the period of relative peace after the fall of the Soviet Empire. On 11 September 1989, thousands of East Germans started to cross the Austrian-Hungarian border to emigrate to West Germany. That eventually meant the end of the Berlin Wall. This date, also being 11 September, is quite remarkable.

The historian James P. O’Donnell unwittingly predicted the year the Berlin Wall would fall. In the German edition of Reader’s Digest, he wrote ten years before it happened, ‘Not long ago I dreamed of Berlin. The year was 1989. The wall was coming down. All along its hideous 165 kilometres, East and West Berliners were pouring out to dismantle it. … Canny merchants were weaving through the happy crowd selling souvenir bricks.¹³

That may not be as remarkable as it may seem at first glance. O’Donnell made his prediction in 1979. If you were thinking in 1979 about the Berlin Wall falling and were guessing when it might happen, 1989 is a year you could easily pick. The end of a decade can be a moment to think of the next decade’s ending. A 1979 ABBA does the same in a song named Happy New Year. But then again, O’Donnell thought of it in 1979, so he likely picked 1989. He could have thought of it in many other years.

There is another peculiar twist. O’Donnell became Newsweek Magazine’s German bureau chief in 1945. He came to Berlin on 4 July 1945 to investigate Hitler’s death and gather information about his wife, Eva Braun.⁵ Braun died at the age of 33, and Hitler died at the age of 56, while 33 + 56 = 89. Hitler was born in 1889. And the erection of the Berlin Wall was a consequence of Hitler’s defeat. And it fell in 1989. There is more to say about Eva Braun. And in 1989, I met this most peculiar Lady.

Latest revision: 6 April 2024

Featured image: NASA mission control celebrating the successful return of Apollo 13. NASA. Public Domain.

1. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams die. History.com (2009).
2. Titanian – Echo of Titanic. Encyclopedia Titanica (2004).
3. Costa Concordia disaster. Wikipedia.
4. MS Costa Allegra. Wikipedia.
5. Curses! Archduke Franz Ferdinand and His Astounding Death Car. Mike Dash (2013). Smithsonian. [link]
6. Roger de Montgomerie, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury. Wikipedia. [link]
7. Hans van Mierlo. Wikipedia. [link]
8. Three surprising details from the JFK assassination – and why they matter. James L. Swanson (2013). The Globe And Mail.
9. Lincoln–Kennedy coincidences urban legend. Wikipedia.
10. Robert Todd Lincoln. Wikipedia.
11. Curse of Tippecanoe. Wikipedia.
12. Apollo 13. Wikipedia.
13. Reader’s Digest, Geman Edition, January 1979
14. James P. O’Donnell. Wikipedia. [link]