12. Let Love Go
Sometimes you lose something you love, and after holding on the hope that it may show up, you might accept that it is gone. But every once in a while that thing pops back up into your life, once you’ve forgotten it. This is what happened to American writer Anne Parrish, who, in the 1920s, found a copy of her childhood favorite Jack Frost and Other Stories in a Paris bookshop. Upon opening the book to its inner flyleaf, she found that it was the very same book she had as a child in Colorado Springs, with her name and address inscribed in it.
11. Founding the Fourth
The founding fathers of the United States of America lived lives that were full of coincidences. Not only did Thomas Jefferson die on the 50th anniversary of the 4th of July, but so did John Adams. Eager to keep up the tradition, fellow founder and president James Monroe died on the 4th of July just five years later.
10. Knock Knock
The South African astronomer Daniel du Toit was renowned for his lectures. After one such lecture, in which he was discussing the possibility of death and that one never knows when it will arrive, he decided to treat himself with a peppermint candy that lodged itself in his throat and choked him to death.
9. Double Exposure
During the beginning of the 20th century, if you wanted to have a picture of your family, you needed to purchase a photographic plate and have the image developed by a specialty shop. In 1914, a German woman did just this in Strasbourg, in order to have the image of her young son forever. While the plate was being developed, World War I broke out, and she was unable to retrieve her photo. Two years and 100 miles later, she was living in Frankfurt, where she decided to have a photo taken of her newborn daughter. After picking up the new photograph, she found that the new photo was superimposed over the very photo of her son from two years prior.
8. City Hot Spot
Vienna was a cultural hotbed in the 20th century, and many intellectuals lived there. In 1913, there were also many revolutionaries in the city. That year saw Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Leon Trotsky, Josip Broz Tito, and Sigmund Freud all living in the same area, and frequenting the same parks and bars. The combined legacy of these men? Together, they’re responsible for over 79 million deaths, and probably just as many visits to the therapist about mommy issues throughout the rest of the century.
7. Beginning and End of War
Undertakers don’t necessarily use a science in order to bury the dead, and when war comes, it can be extremely difficult to make space for the tragically deceased. In a coincidental bookending of World War I, the first and last British troops to die in the war are buried facing each other, from 15 feet away.
That’s poetic.
