As a former police officer, private investigator and interrogator, I do not believe in coincidences. But after years of collecting odd and strange stories from just about everywhere on the planet it’s hard for me not to change my opinion. There are many weird and strange things that occur, and some people call them serendipitous, and others call them coincidences, I just don’t know what the hell to call them. With that thought in mind you be the judge.

On December 5, 1664, the first event in the greatest series of coincidences in history occurred. On this date, a ship in the Menai Straight, off North Wales, sank with 81 passengers on board. There was one survivor, a man named Hugh Williams. On the same date in 1785, a ship sank in the Menai Straight with 60 passengers aboard. There was one survivor, a man named Hugh Williams. On the very same date in 1860 in exactly the same area, a ship sank with 25 passengers on board. There was one lone survivor, a man named Hugh Williams.

In Louisville, Kentucky, three family members died in the same spot, on different dates. A woman was hit by a car, an accident that she survived, but that killed her six-week-old daughter. A few years later, the same woman was killed approximately two blocks away as she jumped from a moving vehicle for an undisclosed reason. But cruel coincidence continued when 20 years later the woman’s 19-year-old son died on the same street when his motorcycle hit a car full of college students.

The wife of Ulysses S Grant awakened on April 14, 1865, with the intense sense that she and her husband should get out of Washington, DC, as soon as possible. They left that day, even though it meant standing up President Abraham Lincoln’s invitation to the theater. That’s why Grant was not killed by John Wilkes Booth that evening when the actor assassinated the president. Booth’s papers later revealed that Grant was on his hit list.

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WHAT DO YOU THINK?