In the flow of American history, there are shocking events that are fateful turning points for a country.
These include two assassinations of US Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.
A series of astonishing coincidences between two events caused many people to question the line between chance and fate.
In 1964, just one year after the death of John F. Kennedy - the 35th president of the United States, a list of coincidences between two events first appeared in the country's mainstream press.
Since then, it has spread, evolved and become an indispensable part of American folk culture.
A number of difficult-to-explain similarities have attracted public attention for decades.
Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846 and became president in 1860. Exactly a century later, Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946 and elected president in 1960.
Both presidents' last names have 7 letters - "Lincoln" and "Kennedy".
Regarding the circumstances of the assassination, both were shot in the head and on a Friday (an unlucky day in Western culture), in the presence of their wives.
President Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theater, and JF Kennedy was shot while riding in a Lincoln carriage made by Ford.
Both were succeeded by vice presidents with the last name Johnson - Andrew Johnson for Lincoln and Lyndon B. Johnson for Kennedy. Notably, both of them were born in '08 (1808 and 1908, exactly 1 century apart).
The assassins of the two presidents were John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, respectively, both known by three names. In particular, the full names of these two people have 15 letters.
However, researchers and skeptics have pointed out that some of the proposed coincidences are inaccurate or exaggerated.
For example, the claim that Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy has been proven false.
Or there are rumors about John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald being born exactly a century apart, coinciding with the gap between the two presidents taking office and the age gap of the two successor vice presidents.
However, in reality, these two assassins were 101 years apart (1838 and 1939).
Mathematician Martin Gardner, in an article in Scientific American in the 1970s, carefully analyzed the list of coincidences between the two events.
He points out many alleged coincidences are based on false information or can be easily explained by statistical probability.
Even so, these coincidences continue to attract public interest.
In 1966, Buddy Starcher's song "History Repeats Itself" , about the many similarities between the two assassinations, became a Top 40 hit in the US and reached number two on the country music charts of its time. that point.
