On the night of July 28, 1900, King Umberto I of Italy was dining with his assistant in a restaurant in the town of Monza, where he was to attend an athletic contest the next day. To my great surprise found that the owner of the establishment was identical to it. Out of curiosity, entered into conversation with him, and he discovered that there were other similarities between them.

The owner also named Humberto, like King, was born in Turin, and on the same day, and had married a girl named Margherita on the same day that the king married his wife, Queen Margherita. And he opened the restaurant the day he was crowned King Umberto I of Italy.

The king was fascinated and invited her twice to attend the athletic contest with him. But the next day, and in the stadium, King’s assistant informed him that the restaurant owner had died that morning after he had shot mysteriously. And while the King expressed his regret, an anarchist who emerged from the crowd shot him and killed him.

Another strange coincidence connected with a death occurred much more recently. On Sunday August 6, 1978, the little alarm clock that Paul VI had bought in 1923, and for 55 years he had woken up at six every morning, “came suddenly, and in a shrill. But it was not six, were at 9:40 pm and, inexplicably, the clock started ringing when the pope lay dying. Later, Father Romeo Panciroli, Vatican spokesman, commented: “It was the strangest thing. The Pope liked the clock. He bought it in Poland and carried with him on his travels. ”

Each of us has experienced a coincidence, however trivial, ever. But some of the most extreme cases seem to defy all logic and it can not be attributed to mere luck.

The Powers of the Universe

It is therefore not surprising that the “coincidence theory” has excited scientists, philosophers and mathematicians for over 2,000 years. There is a recurrent theme in all theories and speculations: What are the similarities? Does it contain a hidden message directed at us? What unknown force they represent? Only in our century have suggested some plausible answers, but they are answers that conflict with the very roots of science. This makes us wonder: are there powers in the universe of those who do not yet have an accurate understanding?

The first cosmologists believed that the world is held together by a kind of principle of totality. Hippocrates, known as the father of medicine, who lived approximately between 460 and 375 BC, believed that the universe was united by a ‘hidden affinities’, and wrote: “There is a common movement, a common breathing, all things are solidarity with each other. “According to this theory, the match would occur when two elements ’solidarity’ or ‘related’ is looking at each other.

The Renaissance philosopher Pico della Mirandola wrote in 1557: “First, there is a unity in things whereby each thing is a set with itself. Second, there is a unit for which a child is attached to the other and all parts of the universe are one world. ”

This belief has persisted, in a barely altered in more modern times. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) defined the match as “the simultaneous occurrence of causally unconnected events. “He suggested that the simultaneous events were on parallel lines, and the same event, although it represents a completely different chain link, is given in both of them, so that the fate of an individual is set invariably the fate of another, and each is the star of his own drama while simultaneously appearing in a drama is alien to him.

This is something beyond our powers of understanding and can only be conceived as possible under the wonderful pre-established harmony. Everyone should participate. Therefore, everything is interrelated and mutually harmonized.

Researching the Future:

The idea of ​​a “collective unconscious”-secret store of memories through which minds can communicate, has been discussed by various thinkers. One of the most extreme theories to explain the agreement was presented by the British mathematician Adrian Dobbs in the sixties. He invented the word “psitrón” to describe an unknown force that recorded such as radar, a second temporal dimension that was probabilistic rather than deterministic. The likely future psitrón absorbed and transmitted to this deviating from the ordinary human senses and somehow transmitting information directly to the brain

The first person who studied the laws of scientific agreement was Dr. Paul Kammerer, director of the Institute of Experimental Biology in Vienna. Since I was twenty, he began writing a “diary” of matches. Many were trivial: names of people who emerged unexpectedly in separate conversations, tickets for the concert and the cloakroom with the same number, a sentence in a book that was repeated in real life.

For hours, Kammerer sat on park benches taking note of people passing, scoring their sex, age, clothing, and if they were carrying sticks or umbrellas. After considering details such as rush hour, weather and time of year, found that the results were classified as “groups of numbers” very similar to those used by statisticians, players, insurance companies and organizers surveys.

Kammerer called this phenomenon “seriality” and in 1919 published his findings in a book entitled Das Gesetz der Serie (The law of seriality). He claimed that the matches were in series-that is, “there was a recurrence or clustering in time or space for which the individual numbers in the sequence were not connected by the same active cause.”

Kammerer suggested that the match was merely the tip of the iceberg in a larger cosmic principle, that humanity is still barely recognized.

Like gravity, is a mystery, but unlike her, acts selectively to match in space and in time things that have some affinity. “So,” he concluded, in the end we have the image of a world-mosaic or cosmic kaleidoscope, despite the constant movements and new provisions, is also concerned about matching the same things. ”

The great leap forward took place 50 years later, when two of Europe’s brightest minds collaborated to produce the most comprehensive book about the power of coincidence, a book that would give rise to controversy and attacks by theoretical rivals.

The two men were Wolfgang Pauli exclusion principle, which, designed in a very bold, he won the Nobel prize in physics, and the psychologist-philosopher Carl Gustav Jung Swiss professor. His treatise took the unoriginal title of synchronicity, an acausal connection principle. Described by one American critic as “the paranormal equivalent of a nuclear explosion,” used the term “synchronicity” to extend the theory Kammerer series.

Order from chaos

According to Pauli, the similarities were “visible traces of unknown principles.” Coincidence, Jung said, whether there are isolated as if they appear in series, are manifestations of a little-known universal principle that operates quite independently of the physical laws. Those who have interpreted the theory of Pauli and Jung have concluded that telepathy, precognition, and these matches are all manifestations of a single mysterious force operating in the universe and is trying to impose its own discipline on the total confusion that governs human life.

Of all contemporary thinkers, no one has dealt with more extensively the theory of coincidence that Arthur Koestler, who summarizes this phenomenon with the pithy phrase “jokes of fate.”

A “joke” was particularly surprising to Koestler told by a twelve-year English student named Nigel Parker: Many years ago, the author of American horror stories, Edgar Allan Poe, wrote a book entitled The story of Arthur Gordon Pym. In it, Mr. Pym was traveling in a boat that sank. The four survivors were many days in a boat before deciding to kill and eat the cabin boy, whose name was Richard Parker.

A few years later, in the summer of 1884, the cousin of my great grandfather was cabin boy in the yawl Mignonette when it sank, and the four survivors adrift on a boat for many days. Finally, the three senior members of the crew killed and ate the cabin boy. His name was Richard Parker.

Such incidents, strange and seemingly meaningful, abound. What explanation can there be for them not to be mere coincidence?.

“You’re not going to believe …”

The most striking coincidences often affect quite common objects or actions, such as the strange experience told by a reporter from Chicago, Irv Kupcinet:

“I had just arrived at London’s Savoy hotel. When you open a drawer in my room I discovered, to my great surprise, it contained some personal items belonging to a friend of mine, Harry Hannin, traveling with the basketball team the Harlem Globetrotters.

Two days later I received a letter from Harry, sent from the Hotel Meurice in Paris, which began: “You will not believe …” Apparently, Harry had opened a drawer in his room and found a tie with my name. It was a room where I had been a few months ago.

The trick of Destination:

Some people appear to be chance events we call coincidences, and manage to take advantage of it. Here are some cases that have drawn special attention.

Only when the train entered the station in Louisville, George D. Bryson decided to interrupt his trip to New York to visit this historic city of Kentucky. I had never been there and had to ask where was the best hotel. Nobody knew I was in Louisville and jokingly asked the receptionist at the Hotel Brown: “There are letters for me?”. He was astonished when the clerk handed him a letter bearing the room number. The previous occupant of room 307 had been another George D. Bryson, who had nothing to do with it.

A remarkable coincidence, of course, that becomes more interesting because those who mind most frequently is Dr. Warren Weaver, mathematician and expert on U.S. likely to believe that coincidences are governed by the laws of chance and rejects any suggestion of mysterious items or paranormal.

The opposing view is located who believe in the theory of “seriality” or “Synchronicity” by Dr. Paul Kammerer, Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Gustav Jung.

Although the three approached the theory of coincidence from different perspectives, their findings suggested the existence of a mysterious force and barely comprehensible in the universe, a force that tries to impose its own order in the chaos of our world. Modern scientific research, especially in the fields of biology and physics, also appears to show a tendency of nature to order the chaos. But skeptics are not convinced.

When things happen by chance, they argue, must be produced clusters we call coincidences. It is even possible to predict these groups or “crowding” or at least predict how often that will happen.

If you throw a coin many times, the laws of probability dictate that in the end, you have obtained an almost equal number of heads and tails. But heads and tails are not altered. Series will face and cross series. Dr. Weaver estimates that if someone flips a coin 1,024 times, for example, is likely to be a series of eight heads in a row, two of seven, four of six and eight from five.

The same is true with the roulette. Once the couple went out 28 times in a row in the Monte Carlo casino. The chances of this happening is one in 268 million. But experts say that such could happen, happened and will happen again somewhere in the world if enough spinners keep spinning as long as necessary.

Mathematicians use the law to explain, for example, the fantastic series of hits that earned the title of Charles Wells, who also was a song, the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.

Monte Carlo Casino

Wells, an Englishman and slightly sinister fat became the subject of the song in 1891, when they blew up three times the bank of Monte Carlo casino. Apparently did not use any system: equal amounts bet on red or black, winning almost every time, until finally surpassed the 100,000 Swiss banks assigned to each table.

On each occasion the employees covered the table with a dark black cloth “mourning” and closed for the day. The third and last time Wells appeared in the casino, placed your first bet on the five, the chances that came out were one in 35. Won. Left the original bet and added profits. Five came back and came out five times. Appeared black cloth. Wells left her earnings and was never seen in the casino.

Theorists of seriality and synchronicity, and who have continued the work of Kammerer, Pauli and Jung, accept the idea that there are “clusters” of numbers, but consider the “fate” and “coincidence” are two sides of the same coin. Paranormal classical concepts of ESP, telepathy and precognition-recurring items in coincidences, “could offer an alternative explanation of the reasons why some people have more ‘luck’ than others.

Modern research on the similarities between two different groups: trivial (as a toss up, series of numbers and amazing hands of cards) and significant. The latter are mixing people, events, space and time-past, present and future, in a way that seems to cross the delicate line that separates the normal from the paranormal.

Significant and Macabre

Sometimes coincidences happen that seem to link, almost whimsically, the rival theories. When a commuter train in New York plunged into Newark Bay, killing many passengers, started the rescue of the submerged cars. A photo that appeared on the front page of a newspaper showing the last car at the time of being removed, with the number 932 clearly visible to one side. That day, the number 932 came in the lottery draw of Manhattan, providing hundreds of thousands of dollars of profit to the many people who, sensing a hidden meaning in numbers, had bet on him.

Modern scholars divide the significant overlap in several categories.

A warning is matching, which involves a feeling of danger or disaster. Such coincidences are often long range, hence they are often ignored or overlooked.

That was certainly the case of three ships, the Titan, the Titanic and titanium. In 1898, the American author Morgan Robertson published a novel about a giant ocean liner, the Titan, which sank on a cold April night in the Atlantic after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage.

Fourteen years later, in one of the worst maritime disasters in history, the Titanic sank on a cold April night in the Atlantic after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage.

The coincidences did not stop there. The two boats, real and fictional, were about the same tonnage and both disasters occurred in the same sector of the ocean. They were both considered “unsinkable” and none had enough lifeboats.

Coincidence and Premonition:

If you add the extraordinary story of Titania, Titan, Titanic coincidences begin to challenge human credulity. The crewman William Reeves, who was on duty one night in April 1935, during a tour of Titanian between the Tyne and Canada, had a hunch. When the Titanian reached the place where they had sunk two ships, the sensation was unbearable. But Reeves could stop the boat just a hunch? Another factor-one decided by coincidence, was born the day the Titanic disaster. “Danger ahead!” Cried the bridge. The words were barely out of his mouth when an iceberg appeared in the dark. The ship narrowly avoided

Another category is the similarities that suggest the comment “The world is a handkerchief” and bringing together people and places unexpectedly. We have all witnessed, or even actors, of any of these incredible events.

If the match can play with space and time in their quest for “order in chaos” is not surprising that beyond the grave.

While performing in a tour of Texas, in 1899, Canadian actor Charles Coghlan Prancis ill and died in Galveston. It was too far (5,600 miles by sea) to send his remains to his hometown of Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He was buried in a lead coffin in a tomb carved out of granite. His bones had rested less than a year when the great hurricane of September 1900 struck the island of Galveston, flooding the cemetery. The tomb was badly damaged and Coghlan’s coffin floated to the Gulf of Mexico. Slowly, drifted along the coast of Florida into the Atlantic where the Gulf Stream dragged him to the North.

Eight years passed. One day in October 1908, some fishermen from Prince Edward Island saw a long drawer and spoiled by the weather floating near the coast. Coghlan’s body was returned home. With respect and fear, his fellow islanders buried the actor in the nearest church, where he was baptized.

Lincoln-Kennedy Parallelism:

When a man takes a step in the understanding of reality, it raises new questions unreachable:

In 1860, Lincoln was elected president of the United States, Kennedy, in 1960.

Both were killed in the presence of their wives and in the same day of the week on Friday.

The two were fatally wounded by a bullet in the head, shot in both cases in the back.

The presidents who succeeded them were named Johnson in either case. Both Johnson represented the Southern Democrats and both were also members of the Senate. Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, born in 1808, Lyndon B. Johnson, in 1908.

The alleged murderer of Lincoln, John Wiik Booth, born in 1839, the alleged murderer of Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald in 1939. Neither of those presumed perpetrators could be tried, since both were murdered before that could happen.

Lincoln’s secretary, named Kennedy, advised him repeatedly to stop going to the theater where he was killed, Kennedy’s secretary, named Lincoln, advised the president not to go to Dallas.

Both wives lost a child while presidents occupying the White House.

John Wilkes Booth killed the presidents Lincoln in a theater and fled to a warehouse, Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired the presidents Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to a theater.