Hey guys, welcome to One Small World, I’ m your host Fern. Today, I’m gonna be talking about coincidences that happened, not to me or you, but throughout history. There are a lot of historical coincidences, I’m definitely not going to get to all of them, but that leaves some for other episodes.
Let’s start with Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Also there a million Hamilton references I could make right now. Even though I studied Virginia history for so many years in school, all the facts I can remember now are a direct result from being obsessed with Hamilton.
1. When the Continental Congress convened in 1775 in Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams became fast friends. The tall, lanky Virginian and stocky Massachusetts native worked together to draft the Declaration of Independence, and spent time together as diplomats for the new United States in Europe. Their relationship frayed, however, when Jefferson succeeded Adams as president in “the Election of 1800”. On opposite sides of the Republican and Federalist divide, the two men remained estranged until 1812, when Adams sent Jefferson a New Year’s greeting. Their reconciliation spawned a remarkable correspondence that lasted for nearly 15 years. On July 4, 1826, as the country celebrated 50 years since declaring its independence from Great Britain, the 83-year-old Jefferson passed away at his Virginia estate, Monticello. The 90-year-old Adams, on his own deathbed in Quincy, Massachusetts, and unaware of his friend’s death, whispered a few last (though sadly mistaken) words: “Thomas Jefferson survives”. History added a postscript to this remarkable coincidence in 1831, when James Monroe became the third of the first five U.S. presidents to die on Independence Day. James Madison, Jefferson’s close friend and fellow Virginian who succeeded him in the White House, died on June 28, 1836, after refusing stimulants offered by his doctors in order to prolong his life until July 4. --Sarah Pruitt, The History Channel: https://www.history.com/news/jefferson-adams-founding-frenemies
The next historical coincidence is about the Hoover Dam. I recently listened to Stuff You Should Know’s episodes about the making of the Hoover Dam and how it works and for a few days I was really into it. According to official records, there were 96 fatalities attributed to the building of the Hoover Dam. One of the first fatalities was John Gregory Tierney, who drowned during a flash flood in the violent Colorado River on December 20, 1921. Fourteen years later, on the same day, December 20, 1935, another man died: it was Tierney’s only son, Patrick William Tierney. Patrick was the last fatality attributed to the dam. He fell to his death from one of the intake towers on the Arizona side of Black Canyon. It’s one of the few legends about the building of the dam (no, there are no workers buried in the concrete) that is actually true. --Reader’s Digest: https://www.rd.com/culture/bizarre-historical-coincidences/
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There’s a creepy coincidence that actually spooks me out. It’s about the untimely deaths of Bruce Lee and his son Brandon Lee. Both were actors who died suddenly while filming. There’s a lot of information out there about this coincidence which has actually graduated to full blown conspiracy.
Bruce Lee was a famed martial artist who is considered one of the greatest today. On July 20th, 1973, five days before the studio release of his last film “Enter the Dragon”, Bruce complained of a headache and took some strong aspirin. He never woke up and his death was ruled an accident related to a bad reaction to the medication. A tragedy, but not completly uncommon. However, many people theorize his death was Triad related, or part of the “Lee Curse” as you will hear a bit more about later on.
His son, Brandon, became an actor as well and was in the middle of filming “The Crow” when on March 30 1993, Brandon was shot and killed on set. His cause of death was a real bullet loaded in place of a blank. A squib, as it’s called in the business, that was forgotten about or mistakenly loaded into the prop gun followed by blanks. The added explosivness of blanks and squibs on film sets to make them show up better on the screen meant extra force behind the shot that was aimed at Brandon. The scene was supposed to be Brandon’s character’s death scene.
Stranger still are the films that both Brandon and Bruce Lee were filming when they died.
Bar the three fight sequences which were directed by Lee himself before his demise, the badly edited and hastily pieced together “Enter the Dragon” is now mainly remembered for the infamous scene in which Bruce's character (played by a lookalike) pretends to be dead after being shot by an assassin on a film set. The scene prior to that even shows a props master instructing the actors (for the movie within a movie) on how to use prop guns with the following line:
"Gentlemen, these are blanks. Only aim upward. There's a wad of paper that comes out that can injure someone."
Fifteen years later, Bruce's son Brandon would die in a North Carolina hospital after being shot in the stomach during his character's murder/death scene in The Crow by a 44-caliber prop gun that was supposedly filled with blanks. Needless to say, this spooky coincidence rekindled the stories of a "Bruce Lee curse." Additionally, weird things happened on the set of The Crow which added fuel to the fire.
This story is just too sad and spooky, I haven’t seen The Crow nor do I think I will ever watch it knowing what happens. --https://geeks.media/curse-of-the-dragon-the-shocking-coincidences-that-led-fans-to-believe-bruce-lee-was-cursed
Violet Jessop, “Miss Unsinkable,” the woman who survived the sinking of the sister ships the Titanic and the Britannic, and was also aboard the third of the trio of Olympic class vessels, the Olympic, when it had a major accident.
Violet worked as a stewardess on The Olympic when she was just 21. In 1911, the Olympic collided with the HMS Hawke (a ship designed to sink ships by ramming them). Both ships sustained considerable damage, including the Olympic having its hull breached below the water line, but miraculously didn’t sink. They were able to make it back to port, and Violet disembarked without being harmed.
A couple of years later, the White Star Line was looking for crew to cater to the VIPs aboard the unsinkable ship, the Titanic. It took a while for her friends and family to convince her that it would be a wonderful experience, but Violet eventually decided to take a job on board the ship. As you already know, the Titanic struck an iceberg and sunk, killing more than 1500 people.
Violet was able to escape the disaster on lifeboat 16.
In the lead-up to World War I, she decided to serve as a nurse on board the Titanic’s other sister ship, Britannic,which was operating in the Aegean Sea. Given her track record, you can probably guess what happened next. The Britannic ran into a mine that had been planted by a German U-boat. The ship sustained substantial damage and quickly started sinking.
This time, Violet wasn’t lucky enough to jump into a lifeboat as the ship was sinking too fast. Instead, she jumped overboard.
After the war, ships were becoming a more and more popular form of transport. Even cruise ships were starting to emerge. Violet left the White Star Line for the Red Star Line and worked on a ship doing world cruises for several years.
Luckily for Violet and everyone traveling on the ships she was aboard later, no such vessel she worked on ever sustained significant damage again. She did take a clerical job for a while after World War II, but went back to working on Royal Mail ships for a few years before she retired at the age of 61. The rest of her life was spent gardening and raising chickens. She died in 1971 of congestive heart failure at the ripe old age of 84. --http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/01/woman-survived-sinking-titanic-britannic-collision-olympic/
And that’s it for today, check back next time for more coincidences and don’t forget to send yours in. But where can I send my stories in? Well, you can just email onesmallworldpodcast@gmail.com. You can visit our website linked in the episode and we have an Instagram! @onesmallworldpodcast where we link our episodes, website, and there’s a direct link to our email. Or DM the Insta, or text me, what have you. Just send them in! Catch ya later!
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