The death of the "Titanic", the wedding of Maria Vittoria dal Pozzo, Carl Jung's fish day and other amazing stories, reading which one involuntarily wonders: are accidents mysticism or regularity?
One of the most important issues of concern to scientists is the issue of predestination. Simply put, is that chain of events that happen to us, is it an accident or was it conceived by some higher power? Einstein himself puzzled over the question: does God play dice?
The physicist Werner Heisenberg tried to put an end to the dispute between fatalists and anti-fatalists at the beginning of the 20th century. The "uncertainty principle" formulated by him asserted that the world is unpredictable, therefore, there is no predetermination in it and cannot be. Most physicists are convinced that all coincidences are just a blind accident. But sometimes this accident is so amazing that doubts inevitably creep in: is it not the hand of providence that leads us? These incredible stories are just one of them.
"Titan" and an iceberg
In 1898, the writer Morgan Robertson, in his novel Futility, described the sinking of the giant ship Titan after colliding with an iceberg on its maiden voyage …
In 1912, 14 years later, Great Britain launched the Titanic motor ship, and in the luggage of one passenger (of course, quite by accident) there was a book called Futility about the sinking of the Titan. Everything written in the book came true, many details of the disaster coincided: an unimaginable hype in the press was raised around both ships even before going to sea because of their enormous size. Both unsinkable ships hit the icy mountain in April, carrying many celebrities as passengers. And in both cases the accident very quickly turned into a disaster due to the captain's indiscriminateness and the lack of life-saving equipment …
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In 1939, 27 years later, in the same area of the Atlantic where the Titanic sank, another ship, the Titanian, sailed at night. Suddenly, an inner instinct suggested something to the steering, and he gave the command "stop the car". When the ship stopped, a huge iceberg suddenly emerged from the darkness and struck a strong, but, fortunately, no fatal blow on the hull …
The history of the shipwreck worries both scientists and filmmakers. Photo: still from the film.
Brother's revenge
In 1883, a rogue Henry Siegland from Texas (USA) abandoned his beloved, who, out of boredom, killed herself. Her brother decided to take revenge on the offender. But the bullet he fired only struck Siegland in the face and got stuck in a tree trunk. Siegland collapsed to the ground, and his brother, deciding that revenge was over, shot himself on the spot … In 1913, 30 years later, Siegland, still alive, decided to cut down the very tree in which the bullet had stuck. The barrel did not budge, and Siegland decided to blow it up with dynamite. During the explosion, the bullet that flew out of the barrel hit the man right in the head. Revenge is finally done!
Grim wedding of the princess
On May 30, 1867, in Turin, the wedding day of Maria Vittoria dal Pozzo, Princess della Cisterna, and Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, son of the King of Italy, was overshadowed by the following list of incidents: 1) the lady in charge of the princess's wardrobe hanged herself; 2) the gatekeeper of the palace cut his throat; 3) the master of ceremonies who led the wedding procession received a sunstroke; 4) the stationmaster was crushed by the wheels of the wedding train; 5) the king's adviser fell from his horse and crashed to death; 6) the groom's witness shot himself. To what has been said, it must be added that the newlywed couple did not live very happily. Actually, no one was surprised at this.
Carl Jung's Fish Day
This story happened to the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung in one day. It began with fish being served to him for dinner. Sitting at the table, he saw a fish wagon passing by. Then his friend and companion at dinner suddenly started a conversation about the custom of "making an April fish" (as the April Fools' jokes are called). Soon, a former patient came to Jung and brought a picture of a large fish as a token of gratitude. Later, a lady appeared, asking the doctor to decipher her dream, in which she herself appeared in the form of a mermaid and a flock of fish swimming behind her. And when the shocked Jung went for a walk on the shore of the lake in order to calmly ponder the whole chain of these strange events, he slipped on a fish thrown ashore.
Irina Rodnina and the same cafe
In 1997, the famous Soviet figure skater Irina Rodnina arrived with a friend in Los Angeles and, passing by the cafe, began to remember: “This is where my first sports partner Ulanov and I first went to a cafe with our own money. At that table …”Imagine her surprise when she saw Ulanov himself at this table. As it turned out, he also brought a friend here to show the place where he first sat in a cafe “with Rodnina herself”!
COMPETENTLY
Matches are mathematically predictable
“We are amazed at the outlandish coincidences, although they are mathematically predictable,” recalls Joseph Mazur, professor emeritus of mathematics at Marlborough College, author of The Game of Chance. Mathematics and mythology of coincidences”. - The law of really large numbers says briefly: if there is an arbitrarily small probability of an event occurring, then sooner or later it will happen. I used the expression "sooner or later," but matches happen much more often than we think. Our world is bigger than we imagine: 7 billion people make decisions every second that lead to an unimaginably huge number of independent results. Unlikely things happen simply because there are so many options and so many of us to know. The reasons for most of the most surprising coincidences may lie too deep,so that we can ever identify them. It is easier to believe in their unexpectedness than in the fact that the extraordinary just happens: we ourselves are calmer.
INCREDIBLE
Shotgun, Window Washer and Ungrateful Son
This happened in the spring of 1994. The young American Ronald Opus decided to commit suicide. Writing in a suicide note that he took this step because of financial difficulties and misunderstandings on the part of his parents, Ronald climbed onto the windowsill and threw himself down from the ninth floor.
He would hardly have done this if he had known that the window cleaners who worked in the house that day had pulled on a safety net at the level of the seventh floor. So, having flown two floors, Opus would have simply collapsed on her, quite alive. But then chance intervened.
As Ronald flew past the eighth-floor window, a stray bullet from the apartment's tenant hit his head from the room. While the police were pulling the corpse out of the net, the detectives decided that the shooter - the absurd old man - should be charged with manslaughter. Further investigation revealed new facts. It turned out that the old man shot at his wife, but missed and the charge hit the window. So, the detectives decided, the accusation must be adjusted - to manslaughter add attempted murder (of the wife). Meanwhile, the old man announced that he was not going to kill anyone. It was just that in moments of quarrels with his wife, he always grabbed an unloaded gun from the wall and frightened his wife by clicking the trigger. It was already like a family ritual. According to both spouses, the shotgun always hung on the wall unloaded.
So, under American law, the manslaughter charge now lay with whoever secretly loaded the shotgun. Having found out that only their son could freely enter the spouses' room, the detectives contacted his friend and found out a lot of interesting things. It turns out that the offspring had long planned to take revenge on his parents for the fact that they refused him material assistance. Knowing that the father often threatens the mother with a weapon hanging on the wall, the son secretly loaded it, hoping that at the first scandal he would shoot his mother and go to jail. But for the past few weeks, the couple have lived surprisingly peacefully. So where is this young bastard?
"As where? - the old man was surprised. - The son lives on the floor above …"
Yes, this son turned out to be himself … Ronald Opus! It was he who loaded the shotgun, and when revenge failed, he threw himself out of the window in despair. Although this whole story looks like a fiction, it is a fact recorded by the American Forensic Science Association.
KONSTANTIN DUNAEVSKY