Are coincidences really coincidences? True story.

Itheblaze

Itheblaze

Chrono Cadet
While on a tour of Texas in 1899, the Canadian actor Charles Francis Coghlan was taken ill in Galveston and died. It was too far to return his remains to his home on Prince Edward Island, in the Gulf of St Lawrence- more than 3,500 miles away by the sea route, and he was buried in a lead coffin inside a granite vault. His bones had rested less than a year when the great hurricane of September 1900 hit Galveston Island, flooding the cemetery. The vault was shattered and Coghlan's coffin floated out into the Gulf of Mexico. Slowly, it drifted along the Florida coastline and into the Atlantic, where the Gulf Stream picked it up and carried it northwards. Eight years passed. Then, one day in October 1908, some fishermen on Prince Edward Island spotted a long, weather-scarred box floating near the shore. Coghlan's body had come home. With respect mingled with awe, his fellow islanders buried the actor in the nearby church where he had been christened as a baby. Chance? Destiny? A mere trick of 'randomness'? Or that strange and powerful force, striving to make sense of the Universe, that some call coincidence?
 
That would be a great story... If it wasn't from Ripley's Believe It Or Not

COGHLAN'S BODY FOUND. - Actor's Casket Was Swept Away by the Galveston Flood in 1900. - View Article - NYTimes.com

In 1904, newspapers reported Coghlan’s coffin had finally turned up on the Texas mainland, but the occupant of the casket must have been someone else, because three years later the New York Times carried a story on Jan. 15, 1907 that a hunter had found Coghlan’s casket partially buried in a marsh in an “out-of-the-way place” about 18 miles inland from Galveston. If that really was Coghlan’s casket, newspapers remained silent on the ultimate disposition of the noted actor’s remains.

Well, at least until 1929. That year, “Believe it or Not” newspaper columnist Robert L. Ripley came out with a widely published column claiming that in 1908 Coghlan’s coffin had washed ashore on Prince Edward’s Island, 2,000 miles by sea from Galveston. Ripley cited as sources two memoirs written by actors who had worked with Coghlan, but it seems more plausible that the tale morphed from the supposed finding of the casket in Texas in 1907.

While the actor’s reputed after-life journey to Prince Edwards Island is generally accepted as a “fakelore,” the basic question remains: What happened to Charles Francis Coghlan?
What happened to Charles Francis Coghlan.

Modern English Biography: (Supplement v.1-3) - Frederic Boase - Google Books


Charles Francis Coghlan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Fine! Un-romanticize my story. I don't care. Well, half of this story is true. His body was swept away by the hurricane of 1900. A reward was put out for anyone to find his body. A bunch of hunters found him 9miles from Galveston. You know, I live just a few miles from Ripley's museum. How much of his museum is based on lies to make a fast buck? I've found the best and most truthful stories are amongst family and friends, where nothing is getting published and no money's being made.
 
Itheblaze said:
Fine! Un-romanticize my story. I don't care. Well, half of this story is true. His body was swept away by the hurricane of 1900. A reward was put out for anyone to find his body. A bunch of hunters found him 9miles from Galveston. You know, I live just a few miles from Ripley's museum. How much of his museum is based on lies to make a fast buck? I've found the best and most truthful stories are amongst family and friends, where nothing is getting published and no money's being made.
Click to expand...

I guess we are an unromantic lot Itheblaze! It was a good story though I hadn't heard of that one thanks.
 
LOL. To answer your original question, I think many "coincidences" are meant to happen. I have a story of my own to share about coincidences.

I was at a store with someone several years ago and I was joking about not having changed the address on my driver's license in a few years after moving back. On my way home, I was pulled over for speeding. The copy let
me off by only ticketing me for not having changed my address. It was much cheaper. LOL!!!!

Ever since then, I've KNOWN God has a sense of humor. :)
 
A coincidence that happened to me..... I was walking across the row of checkouts at a supermarket looking for the least busiest when I was stopped by an ex work colleague of 10 years before and we started chatting, then realised that the person in the queue where we had stopped was another ex work colleague, There were only 4 of us who worked at the company together and 75% were standing at unrelated shop checkout years later.......
 
spectrumisgreen said:
A coincidence that happened to me..... I was walking across the row of checkouts at a supermarket looking for the least busiest when I was stopped by an ex work colleague of 10 years before and we started chatting, then realised that the person in the queue where we had stopped was another ex work colleague, There were only 4 of us who worked at the company together and 75% were standing at unrelated shop checkout years later.......
Click to expand...


Synchronicity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
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