The Fortuity of Flukes, Synchronising History’s Chronology

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Even by the law of averages history throws up a goodly number of coincidences... here’s several instances of where the ‘god’ of happenstance has interwoven itself into the chronology of dates and events.

 ☛ the United States’ second president, John Adams, and its fourth president, Thomas Jefferson, died on the same day...July 4th 1826 (50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence – there’s exquisite patriotic timing for you!). Adams apparently died while enquiring about the health of the younger man Jefferson.

☛ talking about US presidents, Americans rate Abraham Lincoln as pound for pound number one or at worst number two all-time heavyweight champion when it comes to incumbents of the White House. Lincoln shares his birthday, 12th February 1809, with someone equally famous on the opposite side of the Atlantic, England’s father of the “evolution revolution”, that mover and shaker of the human species, Charles Darwin.

☛ the all-time greatest writer in English, William Shakespeare, and the all-time greatest writer Spanish, Miguel de Cervantes, both died on the same day...or did they? The biographical data confirm that they both died on the calendar date, 23rd April 1616, but the catch is that these two towering figures in European literature did not die in real time in the same 24-hour diurnal cycle. This is because Spain and England were functioning under different calendars in 1616. Cervantes died in Spain which was using the Gregorian Calendar, whereas England where the Bard lived and died was under the Julian Calendar. This meant that in actual time lapsed, Shakespeare “shuffled off this mortal coil” about ten days after his Spanish counterpart. So perhaps at best for this instance we should say quasi-coincidence.

☛ Abe Lincoln again figures in the coincidence game, this time juxtaposed with John F Kennedy. Lincoln was elected president in 1860, JFK in 1960. After the untimely assassinations of the two presidents, both were replaced by southern vice-presidents with the surname ‘Johnson’, born 100 years apart. Andrew Johnson was born in 1808 and Lyndon B Johnson in 1908. 

☛ while on the assassination of JFK, all Americans know the date or at least the day and month of the diabolical deed, 22nd November 1963, but not many would be able to say what other famous names share Kennedy’s death-day. We are talking about two celebrated British writers of fiction, Aldous Huxley (famous for the classic dystopian novel Brave New World) and CS Lewis (of children’s fantasy classic The Chronicles of Narnia fame)...their both dying on the same day JFK met his violent end meant they were consigned to be totally overshadowed by the momentous and still reverberating event of the US presidential assassination.

☛ moving from politicians to the thorny world of rock stars, there is the curse of “27” AKA the “27 death phenomena”. The sequence of unconnected popular musical performers, mostly American, who all kicked the bucket at age 27 include Brian Jones (Rolling Stones), Janice Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and most recently Amy Winehouse.

☛ the first shots fired in anger in both world wars occurred not in Europe, where the trigger events that precipitated the conflicts happened, but thousands of kilometres away in the remote southern continent of Australia. Even more remarkably, the two episodes—separated by 21 years—took place in the exact same stretch of water, the heads of Port Phillip Bay. Both times, the battery at Fort Nepean guarding the entrance to Melbourne, following closely upon Britain’s declaration of war against Germany, fired warning shots against a German vessel (or in the instance in 1939, against what they suspected, wrongly, to be an enemy boat).