Tropical storm Dolly has swept across the US – just days after the death of music legend Dolly Parton. It’s a spooky coincidence, given the name was picked six years ago by the World Meteorological Organization.
But it’s not the first time a bizarre fluke has made us wonder if we’re all on some cosmic hidden camera show. Here is a closer look at some others…
What are the odds?
Your chance of picking all six winning lottery numbers is roughly 14million to one. So imagine the fuss when Bulgaria’s lottery came up with the same numbers – 4, 15, 23, 24, 35 and 42 – twice within a week. A probe into the draws on September 6 and 10, 2009, concluded it was just one of those things.
Double blind
Identical twins Jim Lewis and Jim Springer were four weeks old when they were adopted by different parents in 1940. They were 39 when they next met – and discovered they were eerily similar.
Both had married women named Linda, then divorced and remarried to women named Betty. And one had a son called James Allan, while the other had a son called James Alan.
Liberty and death
On July 4, 1776, the US adopted its Declaration of Independence.
The order was signed by two future presidents – third POTUS Thomas Jefferson and his predecessor John Adams – both of whom died exactly 50 years later, on July 4, 1826. Jefferson passed away in Virginia aged 83, followed by Adams, 70, four hours later in Massachusetts.
The holiday claimed a third leader, fifth POTUS James Monroe, when he died on July 4, 1831.
The British – and obviously, best – Dennis the Menace(Image: DC Thomson)
Phantom Menace
Beloved prankster Dennis the Menace first appeared in the Beano on March 12, 1951. But weirdly enough, another comic strip with the same name made its debut that very day across the pond.
The US Dennis is a blond, prank-loving five-year-old in red dungarees, created by illustrator Hank Ketcham. He’s got nothing to do with the Scottish version, dreamed up by Beano editor George Moonie and drawn by David Law.
Poe with the flow
Author Edgar Allen Poe was always pretty creepy. His only full novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838), features a shipwreck in which starving survivors kill and eat a cabin boy called Richard Parker.
His grim fantasy was realised in 1884, when English yacht Mignonette sank and the surviving crew killed and ate a 17-year-old cabin boy… called Richard Parker.
Easy comet, easy go
Novelist Mark Twain was born in 1835, two weeks after Halley’s Comet was spotted in the skies.
He predicted in 1909 that he would “go out with” the phenomenon when it was next seen the following April – and he was right. He died of a heart attack just one day later.
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By staronline@reachplc.com (Meg Jorsh)
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