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We're not going to bullshit you. Look hard enough, and you can find "amazing" coincidences anywhere. With a whole universe to work with, sometimes the stars are going to align just right. But, even cynical types like us have to admit that sometimes this stuff can get downright creepy. #6.
A Terrifyingly Accurate Prediction by Edgar Allan Poe
In 1838, future horror-god Edgar Allan Poe released a book called The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, his only full novel. The book was such a bomb that Poe eventually agreed with his critics that it was "a very silly book" (yet still good enough to inspire heavyweights like Jules Verne and Herman Melville to write Moby Dick and An Antarctic Mystery--yes, Poe was a badass).
Where it Gets Weird: Poe did a Blair Witch thing with his novel, which claimed to be based on true events. This turned out to be a half-truth: The real life events simply had not happened yet. One scene in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket visits a whaling ship lost at sea, taking with it all but four crewmen. Out of food, the men drew lots to see who would be eaten, the unfortunate decision landing on a young cabin boy named Richard Parker.
Forty-six years later, there was an actual disaster at sea involving the Mignonette. It became famous due to the legal consequences of some gruesome events on board, specifically the way the men drew lots and decided to eat their cabin boy... Where it Gets Even Weirder: ...who was named Richard Parker.
The bizarre story was discovered decades later by Nigel Parker, a distant cousin of the Richard Parker who got eaten. You can only imagine what the fuck went through his mind when he stumbled upon the connection.
And that would go down as the freakiest unintentional prediction of future events in a work of fiction, if it were not completely blown away by... #5.
Morgan Robertson Writes About the Titanic... 14 Years Early
A hundred years before James Cameron turned douchebaggery into an art form at the Oscars, American author Morgan Robertson wrote a shitty book called Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, about the sinking of an "unskinkable" ocean liner. When you see the cover, you figure you're pretty clearly looking at a fictionalized version of the Titanic story.
No surprise there; it's a story that's been told over and over (there were 13 Titanic movies before Cameron's, including one by the Nazis) but Robertson's book was first. Where it Gets Weird: He was so eager to be first, apparently, that he didn't bother to wait for the Titanic to actually sink before writing about it. The Wreck of the Titan was published in 1898, 14 years before RMS Titanic was even finished being [cheaply] built. The similarities between Robertson's work and the Titanic disaster are so astounding that one has to imagine if White Star Line built Titanic to Robertson's specs as a dare. The Titan was described as "the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men," "equal to that of a first class hotel," and, of course, "unsinkable". Both ships were British-owned steel vessels, both around 800 feet long and sank after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic, in April, "around midnight." Sound like enough to keep you up at night? Maybe that's why Robertson republished the book in 1912 just in case enough people didn't know that he wrote it.
Where it Gets Even Weirder: While the novel does bear some curious coincidences with the Titanic disaster, there are quite a few things that Robertson got flat wrong. For one, the Titanic did not crash into an iceberg "400 miles from Newfoundland" at 25 knots. It crashed into an iceberg 400 miles from Newfoundland at 22.5 knots. Wait, what the fuck? That's one hell of a lucky guess!
But maybe the weirdest thing about Titan were points that had nothing to do with the story, but check out after numerous inquires and expeditions to the Titanic wreck site. For one, both the Titan and the Titanic had too few lifeboats to accommodate every passenger on board; the Titan carrying "as few as the law allowed." While Robertson decided to be generous and include four lifeboats more on his ship than Titanic, it's an odd point to bring up when you consider that lifeboats had nothing to do with the fucking story. When Titan hit the iceberg (starboard bow, naturally), the ship sank immediately, making the point made about lifeboats inconsequential. Why the fuck mention this?! It'd be like HAL 9000 addressing the danger posed by O-rings at low temperature decades before the Challenger disaster. #4.
The Civil War Keeps Finding Wilmer McLean
When the American Civil War erupted in 1861, Wilmer McLean of Virginia was too old and "whatever" for warfighting. Unfortunately, he also happened to live smack dab on the road between Washington, DC and Richmond, VA, the respective capitals of the Union and Confederacy. The first battle of the Civil War pretty much happened at this guy's place. The Battle of Bull Run, broke out on July 21, 1861 near Manassas, Virginia--McLean's hometown. Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard needed a building to serve as headquarters for his staff and many initials, and when he saw Wilmer McLean's cozy house, he figured "what the fuck..." and camped there.
This immediately subjected the building to artillery fire, and one cannonball somehow found its way down the poor bastard's chimney. The entire building should have gone up like the Death Star, yet miraculously no one was hurt. Where it Gets Weird: But, hey, an insane amount of fighting occurred along that road. A lot of people between Richmond and DC could say a battle happened on their front lawn. And, after this narrow escape with the Reaper in his very own home, McLean figured that moving his family out of No Man's Land would be a smart bet.
However, the man took so long to skip town that when 1862 rolled around, a battle nearly twice as large and four times as bloody exploded just outside his front door again--the Second Battle of Bull Run. After dodging this second bullet the size of Civil War battlefield, McLean finally sold and moved his family as far away as he could afford. Where it Gets Even Weirder: When Wilmer settled on a cottage in Clover Hill, Virginia, the town that later changed its name to Appomattox Court House. By 1865, Robert E. Lee's "invincible" Army of North Virginia was too busy having the ever-loving shit kicked out of it by General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union Army to defend Richmond. So after abandoning their capital, Lee's sorry-excuse-for-an-army was chased by Grant all across Virginia to... fucking Appomattox Court House.
On April 9, 1865, General Lee officially surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. The site for his surrender: the parlor of Wilmer McLean's new home. Once the two armies left (and helped themselves to some furniture as souvenirs), the now-bankrupt McLean remarked: "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor," which is probably the classiest way a man can handle the single most shit-luck in American history.
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You know that Nazi version of the Titanic story? The one that was supposed to be an anti-British, anti-American, and anti-capitalist allegory that turned out to be an example of the bloated corruption and the sinking of Nazi Germany? It too is part of some amazing coincidences. The film was shot onboard a ship called the SS Cap Arcona, that in 1945 would sink with greater loss of life than the Titanic. Then, the day the film was ready to premiere, the theatre was bombed and the original print (known as the answer print) of the film destroyed.
And just to add to it, scenes and storylines in Cameron's Titanic seem to be lifted straight from the Nazi Titanic, except for that Cameron claims he has never seen the film, and it's unlikely he did, because while a bootleg German print was released in 1992, the film was not readily available in North America until 2005. Now Cameron is a special effects guy, and Nazi Titanic apparently is amazing for a 1943 movie, but unless Arnold Schwarenegger secretly wants to recreate the Anschluss and holds a big collection of Nazi propaganda and gave it Cameron in 1994 to watch, then it's just another strange coincidence.
According to that link to the NASA page, Cleveland is home to 9 of those 24 Ohioan astronauts. Somehow that that makes a sad, sad sense. After all, the only way to be successful and from Cleveland is apparently to achieve that success by leaving Cleveland, just ask the Baltimore Ravens, or Lebron James a year from now.
Technically, James is from Akron.
If you're from Ohio, it's all the same.
this article is absolutely brilliant
humanity will be in danger in the year 2077.
Don't say i didn't warn you.O_O
At-least its not 2012 crap.
Are the Chinese going to bomb us?
Not to mention Zachary Taylor, who may have died on July 9th 1850, but from either being poisoned or eating bad food(depending on who you believe) on July 4, 1850
The "Commence mindf**king" part cracked me up.
I'm from Dayton, Ohio (where the Wrights made plans for their planes) and distantly related to John Glenn. There's a coincidence.
Wow, I assumed that everyone in Ohio was related to each other.
Saying you're related to John Glenn isn't saying much.
There's nothing remarkable about the mention of not enough lifeboats, at the time NO large shipcarried enough for everyone on board, there are two reasons for this:
1. The laws governing how many lifeboats you were required to carry were old and did not scale with number of passengers
2. Nobody thought a ship that big could sink in 2 hours, the way lifeboats were generally used was to go back and fourth between the sinking ship and whatever other ships showed up to help. Lifeboats for everyone was simply not something anyone expected they would need, ever.
Also the Titanic carried 4 more lifeboats than it was required to by law, besides more lifeboats wouldn't have helped all that much since they didn't even launch all the ones they had, and for quite some time had serious difficulty convincing people to get into them...
Even if there had been enough for everyone it would have been exceptionally difficult to get everyone into them in the time they had before the ship sank.
The reason the Titanic sank as fast as it did was because it struck the iceberg in pretty much the worst possible way, and in fact if it had just plowed right into it instead of turning it would not have sank.... or had they not reversed the engines they might have missed it entirely (the reason for this is that reversing the engines reduced the ships ability to turn, something that was not the case for earlier ships, hence why it was done, with pretty much any other ship afloat at the time it would have been the right thing to do)
It's a shame the Cracked folk missed this ... the Titan was also described as having four funnels, of which one was also a dummy, and its Captain was also named Smith. (Robertson did get one point wrong: although Titan did sink on its maiden outing, it was on its return leg to Britain, having successfully reached New York first. Oh, well --- can't win 'em all.)
Talk about completely missing the point.
The Wright Brothers weren't both born in Ohio(Wilbur was born just over the state line in Indiana), but they did call it home, so that's probably good enough. :)
Another funny Ohio astronaut thing... Kathy Sullivan, the first woman to make a space walk, though she wasn't BORN in Ohio, moved to Ohio and became the CEO of the COSI science museums. Seems the state not only produces aviation pioneers but also draws them back for some reason.
Oh, and eight presidents were from Ohio, making it second only to Virginia (which has a bit of an advantage, obviously).
Draws them back...as in one?
I have another one! I've been looking for long woolly underwear for years. Yesterday I went to a jumble sale and there were 6 unopened packs of EXACTLY the pants I wanted but they were the wrong size. I bought one pair so that I could try to find the company on the web. I was eating my brekkers this morning whilst reading CRACKED and there was an advert for the exact wolly pants company. How weird a coincidence is that? Well, quite weird I thought.
Here is one that is a bit more recent, but hasn't really gained any type of attention to my knowledge...
In "Enemy of the State", starring Will Smith, there is a moment when he teams up with Gene Hackman's character (Brill, a former NSA communications specialist/badass) and he runs a progran that breaks in to the government database servers in less than 10 seconds and comes up with the file of a congressman, who is played by Jon Voight.
Ok... so commence the mind f**king...now...
Voight's character, Congressman Reynolds, is a power-hungry political official, who is spear-heading a bill that would deflate any type of privacy protections we have buffering us from the over-reaching oppressive intentions of the government, in the name of "national security"...
Sounds like based on a true story, no? Oh, wait a second.... "Enemy of the State" came out in 1998... three years before the PATRIOT Act was even a murmur by anyone in Congress. And the even more f**ked up part? Remember when I mentioned the above scene, when Gene Hackman hacks (boom!) in to Jon Voight's file? The congressman's DOB in the file: 9/11/40
Just pay attention between the lines, and you can see how eerie it is that a fictional movie with over the top assumptions like "the government is always watching you", "the government can hear everything you say", "do anything it takes to stop terrorism" was really a pre-cursor to the events to come, and because we showed our approval by being entertained with how it went down with Will Smith, the government figured it'd be OK just to do it in real life--- PATRIOT Act!
Except both of these could be easily predicted due to the culture of the time. Others on this list were totally unpredictable
Just because it was the first movie to make something occur to you while you're on stoned doesn't mean said "prophecy" wasn't "around" for some time before.
As creepy as the coincidence with Robert Parker in the real-life ship Mignonette and Poe's novella, Poe really did base Arthur Gordon Pym on a real-life story, as did Melville. The whaleship Essex set sail from Nantucket in 1820, was attacked by a whale late in the year, and by the time they were rescued in March 1821, only 5 crew members were remaining. The Captain was part of one boat where members had drawn lots to determine who would be eaten.
Don't believe me? I just had to read In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick for a class.
Yay, great article. Anyone know which article has that picture of greco-roman pottery with some sort of pedophile s**t going on? Anyone?
...
Bulls**t! If your head really exploded how the hell did you finish the article, hey wise-ass? We aren't all idiots!
I used my penis.
A lack of Jonathan Swift is quite disappointing
Wilmer Mcleans house (The Stone House) still sits today, corner US 29 and VA rte 234 in the middle of Bull Run Natl Park - still has bullet holes in it from the war....
The first few were bigger mindscrews than the second page.
Good, freaky ass stuff!
Oh great man.I can't believe man!I am very exited to view more such kind of Coincidences here.Please share more stuff here.Thanks.
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