Manny facts of life are so strange and mind-boggling, make one wonder whether everything is predetermined, or we actually have an illusion of the Free Will? Consider some peculiar facts:

*** Napoleon / Hitler:
1st one was born in 1760, 2nd one was born in 1889 --- difference: 129 years

Napoleon came to power in 1804, Hitler achived the same in 1933 -- difference: .........................................................................................................129 years
(Napoleon was 44 years old! . . . . . Hitler was 44 years old!)

Napoleon entered Viena in 1812, Hitler did the same in 1941 --- difference: ..................................................................................,,,,,,............129 years

Napoleon lost the war in 1816, Hitler suffered the same fate in 1945 -- difference: .........................................................................................................129 years

Napoleon attacked Russia when was 52 years old, Hitler did the same at the same age! *
Napoleon lost the war when was 56 years old, Hitler suffered the same fate at the same age of 56! *
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*** Lincoln / Kennedy:
1st one was born in 1818, 2nd one was born in 1918 ..............
................................................................................... difference: 100 years

Lincoln became a USA president in 1860, Kennedy accomplished the in 1960 ........................................................
....................................difference: 100 years
(Both were Southerners, both Democrats, both have been senatord.)

Lincoln was killed on Friday with a shot in the head in presence of his wife, Kennedy -- same fate, same circustances *
Lincoln was killed at the "Kennedy" theatre, Kennedy was killed in the "Lincoln" automobile * * *
Before his death, Lincoln visited Monroe town in Meriland, Kennedy had an affair with Marrylin Monroe *

Lincoln's killer, John Wilkes Booth, was born in 1939, Kennedy's killer (Lee Harvey Oswald) was born in 1939 ----------------- difference: 100 years
Both killers' names consist of 15 letters *
After the assasination, Booth escaped to the attic where he was captured, Oswald escaped from the attic and was arrested at the theatre *
After the murder, Lincoln was succeeded by Johnson, After the murder, Kennedy was succeeded by Johnson:
-- the first successor, Andrew Johnson, was born in 1808, the second -- in 1908 * ------------------------------------------------ difference: 100 years

***>>>> Simple calculation allows for estimating the birth of the next "Anti-Christ" (i.e. dictator):
Hitler was born in 1889, plus 129 year = 2018!!! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

But that's not the most fascinating. That same year will witness the arrival of the other pair, "Lincoln / Kennedy"!!! Judge for yourself:
Kennedy was born in 1918, plus 129 year = 2018!!! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
(which means "next Kennedy" will come to power in 2060. By the same token, in 2062 the next Napoleon will come to power!!!

Certainly, these strange (mind-boggling) parallels defy any logical exolanations.... And history is full of similar cases!

Of corse, such coincidences prove noting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!....(But who knows? ? ?)

Gotcha, kill all babies born in 2018 and don't vote for a democrat in 2060 so we can save a life.

Wow ... ! Here ... you hold it - I'll light it ...

This part here (" ... Lincoln became a USA president in 1860, Kennedy accomplished the in 1960 ... difference: 100 years (Both were Southerners, both Democrats, both have been senatord.) ... " blows the entire thing out of the water because it's factually WRONG - Lincoln was a REPUBLICAN who was born in Kentucky. Kennedy was a DEMOCRAT who was born in Massachusetts. If ONE data point is wrong, the rest of the 'data' is equally likely to be wrong. Nice try, tho' ...

And what's up with the sentence structure and all the little dot thingies ... ? Looks like a smokescreen to divert attention from the fact that it's got a bunch of mistakes in it ... like spelling, syntax, etc ...

OMG! Start by getting your fact straight. Lincoln's wife was NOT named Kennedy, and he was a republican, not a democrat.

As for predetermination, I'll leave that to the Jehovah Witnesses. :)

Since so many seem to find fault in the above listings which in fact I have received in e-mail prior as well and just assumed they were correct. Figured I would post this that I found now if they are true or not I have not actually did the research. But sure someone will point out if they are wrong as well... Got this from this site..

http://www.2spare.com/item_51964.aspx

But if they are correct one must admit that there are many coincidences between these two men!!

A. Lincoln and J.F. Kennedy
Life
# Both presidents had 7 letters in their last name.
# Both were over 6' feet tall.
# Both men studied law.
# Both seemed to have lazy eye muscles, which would sometimes cause one to deviate.
# Both suffered from genetic diseases. It is suspected that Lincoln had Marfan's disease, and Kennedy suffered from Addison's disease.
# Both served in the military. Lincoln was a scout captain in the Black Hawk War, and Kennedy served as a navy lieutenant in World War II.
# Both were boat captains. Lincoln was a skipper for the Talisman, a Mississippi River boat, and Kennedy was skipper of the PT 109.
# Both had no fear of their mortality and disdained bodyguards.
# Both often stated how easy it would be to shoot the president. Lincoln supposedly said, "If somebody wants to take my life, there is nothing I can do to prevent it." Kennedy supposedly said "If somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it." Note that both these quotes are each 16 words long.

Death
# Both presidents were shot in the head, on a Friday.
# Both were seated beside their wives when shot. Neither Mrs. Lincoln nor Mrs. Kennedy was injured. Both wives held the bullet-torn heads of their husbands.
# In each case, the man was injured but not fatally. Major Henry Rathbone was slashed by a knife, and Governor John Connolly was shot.
# Lincoln sat in Box 7 at Ford's Theatre. Kennedy rode in car 7 in the Dallas motorcade.
# Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre. Kennedy was shot in a Ford product, a Lincoln limousine.
# Mrs. Kennedy insisted that her husband's funeral mirror Lincoln's as closely as possible.

The Assassins
# Both assassins used three names: John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. (It should be noted that Lee Harvey Oswald was known as just Lee Oswald prior to the assassination.)
# There are 15 letters in each assassin's name.
# Both assassins struck when in their mid-twenties. Booth was born in 1838, and Oswald was born in 1939.
# Each assassin lacked a strong father figure in his life. Booth's father died when he was 13 years old, and Oswald's father died before he was born.
# Each assassin had two brothers whose careers he coveted. Booth's two brothers were more successful actors and Oswald envied his brothers' military lives.
# Both assassins were privates in the military. Booth was a private in the Virginia Militia, and Oswald was a private in the Marine Corps.
# Both assassins were born in the south.
# Both assassins were known sympathizers to enemies of the United States. Booth supported the Confederacy and Oswald was a Marxist.
# Both assassins often used aliases. Booth frequently used "J. Wilkes" and Oswald used the name "Alek J. Hidell."
# Booth shot Lincoln at a theatre and was cornered in a warehouse. Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and was cornered in a theatre.
# Each assassin was detained by an officer named Baker. Lt. Luther B. Baker was leader of the cavalry patrol which trapped Booth at Garrett's Barn. Officer Marion L. Baker, a Dallas motorcycle patrolman, briefly detained Oswald on the second floor of the School Book Depository until he learned that he worked there.
# Both assassins were killed with a single shot from a Colt revolver.
# Both assassins were shot in a blaze of light-Booth after the barn was set afire, and Oswald in the form of television cameras.

Family and Friends
# Both presidents were named after their grandfathers.
# Both were born second children.
# Both married while in their thirties. Lincoln married at 33 and Kennedy married at 36.
# Both married dark-haired, twenty-four-year-old women.
# Both wives died around the age of 64. Mary Todd Lincoln died in 1882 at age 63 years and 215 days, and Jackie Kennedy died in 1994 at age 64 years 295 days.
# Both wives were known for their high fashion in clothes.
# Both wives renovated the White House after many years of neglect.
# Each couple had four children, two of whom died before becoming a teen.
# Each couple lost a son while in the White House. Willie Lincoln died at age 12 in 1862, and Kennedy's son Patrick died two days after his birth in 1963.

Politics
# Both presidents were elected to the House of Representatives in '46.
# Both were runners-up for the party's nomination for vice-president in '56.
# Both were elected to the presidency in '60.

Vice-Presidents
# Southern Democrats named Johnson succeeded both Lincoln and Kennedy (Andrew Johnson and Lyndon Baines Johnson.
# Andrew Johnson was born in 1808, and Lyndon Johnson was born in 1908.
# There are six letters in each Johnson's first name.
# Both Johnsons served in the military. Andrew was a brigadier general in the Civil War and Lyndon was a commander in the U.S. Navy during WW2.
# Both Johnsons were former southern senators.
# Both Johnsons had urethral stones, the only presidents to have them.
# Both Johnsons chose not to run for reelection in '68.

I love these similarity listings. They're fun.

I have no standard for evaluating how 'unlikely' these combinations of similarities truly are.

Intuitively, I'd guess the birthday problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem) plays a role in this, as does a kind of cherry picking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking). (True cherry picking relates to selection of evidence; and this is not really a matter of 'evidence', just 'observed similarities' - but the consequences of intentional selection still apply).

There are a massive number of possible correlations to make between any two human beings, and a massive number of historical figures to choose among for making such comparisons; which would suggest that its not very unlikely to find such similarities. It would be like throwing several dozen 100-sided dice, and then marveling at how many came up with the same number on them. On the other hand, the number of coincidences that are found between the two selected historical figures seems a bit high. 'Seems'...based on what? My intuition? The same intuition which would have found the birthday problem a surprising result (before learning about combinatorics)? I know this, and yet....it still simply seems too high.

I'd love to know is someone tried to calculated how the probabilities would play out without taking a cherry-picking approach.

Dear TxsGal3333:
Thank you very much for your message, which confirms many similarities -- although I confused a few facts (at 2 AM that's expected!) Nevertheless, the general idea is correct! (especially about Napoleon/Hitler).

Thank you once again for confirming my post (at least, some of it)!

Sincerely, JaneStar1

p.s. I got pleasantly dismayed how some of the readers enjoy putting others down because they (the latter) have found a few insignificant inconsistencies in the former's presentation!!! _____________________ ___________________

A few insignificant...? Isn't the whole point that the entirety of the facts listed are supposed to be true, otherwise they are insignificant themselves? I think it only logical that one "similarity" stretched to fit a certain criteria, puts suspicion on other conclusions the post claims. This essentially makes the difference between things like the post being "propaganda" and not "text book".



It didn't say Lincoln's wife was named Kennedy, it said the same thing happened to Kennedy. It was poorly punctuated throughout, so your misconception was more than understandable.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know -- creativity is envied and discourage!
However, the amazing (confirmed & verified) coincidences are evident:
.
***************** A. Lincoln and J.F. Kennedy:
1. Both presidents had 7 letters in their last name.
2. Both were over 6 feet tall.
3. Both men studied law.
4. Both seemed to have lazy eye muscles, which would sometimes cause one to deviate.
5. Both suffered from genetic diseases: it is suspected that Lincoln had Marfan's disease, and Kennedy suffered from Addison's disease.
6. Both had no fear of their mortality and disdained bodyguards.
7. both presidents were were killed with a shot in the head, on a Friday.
- both were seated beside their wives when shot. Both wives held the bullet-torn heads of their husbands.
8. Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre. Kennedy was shot in a Lincoln limousine (a Ford product).
9. Booth shoot Lincoln at a theatre and was cornered in a warehouse. Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and was cornered in a theatre.
10. Each assassin detained by an officer named Baker: Lt. B.Baker was leader of the cavalry patrol which trapped Booth at Garrett's Barn. Officer Marion L. Baker, a Dallas motorcycle patrolman, briefly detained Oswald on the 2nd floor of the School Book Depository until he learned that Oswald worked there.
11. Both presidents were succeeeded by their vice-presidents, with the same last name: Lincoln - by Andrew Johnson, and Kennedy - by Lyndon Baines Johnson.
12. Both Johnsons were former southern senators.
13. Both Johnsons had urethral stones, the only presidents to have them.

**** But the moost amazing coincidence is that Both Booth and Oswald were patsys:
* Booth did not kill Lincoln.
* Oswald did not kill Kennedy.

Intuitively, I'm quite aware of the fact that some of you may want to request me proving myself with cold hard (and verifyable) facts! But, please, be aware of my pre-emptive respose:

JaneStar, you do know that this collection of claims has been circulating for a long time, right? At least one of my history teachers actually included a similar list of comparisons (limited only to factually correct information) as part of our curriculum.

If one is to be impressed by the seeming 'coincidence' of it, then the first question to ask is: how unlikely is this, really?

One hundred factual similiarities between two people isn't much, is it?

How many are possible?

According to statistics, some coincidences are inevitable.
But so many at once -- seems a bit eery!!!
.
__________________________ ________________________________
.
However, that's NOT the only historical coincidence!

And how many pairwise comparisons are possible?

Its not like this is based on someone saying... hey, lets check out these two people... woah! Look at how many coincidences there are! How bizarre is that?

We have all people of note, everywhere, as potential sources of coincidences. Its the birthday problem on the scale of millions!

It seems eery to me, too. But so did the birthday problem, long long ago. Our collective intuition for this aspect of combinatorics/probability is simply not well developed, as a group.

You sure seem to be trying to play it down, somehow. I don't know about you, but I got dumb-struck when I discoved so many coincidences!

The point trying to be made is that, yes it can be played down simply because there are multiple millions of things that COULD be possible between any two people over the course of their lives. When considering that fact, a hundred is a vague comparison.

Consider that the grand majority of presidents have studied or practiced law at one point or another, you can eliminate that as a "surprise similarity".

The presence of a person named "Baker" is also not surprising considering if you look in any phone book, you'll probably find a couple hundred listings at least. Call any police department and ask for "Baker" and they'll probably ask you "which one?". There was probably an officer Baker present when the assassination attempt was made on Reagan.

I think most people are dumbstruck the first time they are presented with a list of such facts...unless by strange coincidence they became mathematicians first. The question is, what do we do after being dumbstruck? What do we do with the information in front of us, and our dumbstruck state of mind?

I think these 'factual listing' are a kind of Rorschach test; based on how people respond to them, they show us how badly some people want to believe in (insert twilight zone music) rather than thinking 'before I run with my impression that this is an amazingly coincidence, let me ask what the odds really are'.

Okay, that was a false dichotomy: there is a greater range of responses. Such as yours, which seems (forgive me if I'm wrong) to be something like: "I don't presume meaning here, but isn't this weird in how unlikely this seems?"



I interpret this sentence as possibly a veiled presumption about my motives, or a possible suggestion that a confirmation-bias-type perceptual filter is at work in my response. (I don't take offense, I'm simply being honest with you.)

Yet, I don't see anything significant in this convo to play down, since, thankfully, no significant claims are being made here. I am thinking of the silent audience, and the fact that most of us have spent most of our lives without the tools to even begin to put this in context.

If you knew someone - perhaps a young child, or someone of extremely low intelligence - who reached (without looking) into a silverware drawer of equal numbers of knives, spoons, and forks, then pulled out a fork and said: "Woah! I wanted a fork, and thats what I pulled out! Isn't that amazing? I mean, what are the odds?!" would you want them to know that the odds were actually as high as 1 in 3? What if you knew many such people, and when this happened 1/3 of the time with them, they started to believe crazy things, like 'the drawer reads minds' or 'my hand is being guided by a supernatural force to the utensil I want'. Wouldn't this strike you as silly, and worthy of a bit of 'hey, lets do the actual math here' ?

I still think this is an excellent, and open question: How does one begin to calculate the odds of having these similarities?

One key observation here is to realize how much information is being sorted through to find this. For example, when its said that both of their last names have the same number of letters, we have ignored facts about their first names, middle names, total names, names of wives/fathers/mothers/children, starting letters, ending letters, number of consonants, number of vowels, number of syllables in their names, as well as the total numerological 'value' their first names, last names, middle names, total names, etc etc.... if any of those measurements had yielded a similarity, that similarity would have been listed, and the average reader would not have given a second thought to the degree of cherry picking that was involved. (Plus, I'd guess most names are probably from 4-10 letters to begin with; not much of a coincidence.)

Therefore, I think the 7-letters comment is a complete non-coincidence, and should be struck from the list completely.

This principle of sorting through massive amounts of potential similarities, and only showing the matches (which I believe CS was alluding to), applies to some degree to most elements in most of these list of facts.

James Madison
Andrew Jackson
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
Warren Harding
John F Kennedy
Lyndon B Johnson
William J Clinton

8 in 44 or 1 in 5.5 presidents share that.



2008 Barack Obama 6 ft 1 in
1996 Bill Clinton 6 ft 2 in
1988 George H.W. Bush 6 ft 2 in
1984 Ronald Reagan 6 ft 1 in
1964 Lyndon Johnson 6 ft 3½ in
1960 John F. Kennedy 6 ft 0 in
1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt 6 ft 2 in
1920 Warren G. Harding 6 ft 0 in
1880 James A. Garfield 6 ft 0 in
1864 Abraham Lincoln 6 ft 4 in
1856 James Buchanan 6 ft 0 in
1832 Andrew Jackson 6 ft 1 in
1820 James Monroe 6 ft 0 in
1789 George Washington 6 ft 2 in

14 in 44 or 1 in 3.2 presidents share that.



27 in 44 or 1 in 1.6 presidents share that.



Not uncommon, no info on other presidents found.



We all 'suffer' from genetic predisposition.



Many people have no fear of death.



1 in 4 have either been assassinated or survived an assassination attempt. Presidents often ride beside their wives. What else would a wife do?



How many limo makers were available to choose from?



So a warehouse and a theatre were somehow involved.



So the detaining officer shared the same last name. What can be derived from that? The future is a repeat of the past?



The vice-president always succeeds an assassinated president, and their name has no effect on that.



17 of 1,914 US senators have had or currently have the name Johnson. 1 of 112 share that.



1 in 22 have had them. So those are the two.

http://www.snopes.com/history/american/lincoln-kennedy.asp

This is a really great topic, on many levels, for truth-oriented and reality-oriented people to learn about interpreting claims.

The snopes article is great - thanks CS - and it shows more clearly how people have manufactured claims to fit their beliefs.

Once people get excited about and attached to a system of beliefs, the telephone game is on, the email chain letter writers get warmed up, and these little 'facts' which are completely false start creeping into the conversation, and few people even notice.

Here's to Snopes.com