Beyond Coincidence (25 page)

He may, however, have inspired the American use of the word
crapper
for toilet. It's said that American soldiers stationed in Britain during the First World War adopted the expression after seeing the words “T. Crapper—Chelsea” printed on British cisterns.

T
HE
E
XISTENTIAL
P
RESS
O
FFICER

Journalists covering the story of post-Afghanistan prisoners holed up in the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, often note how Kafkaesque their plight is. This is a reference to the early twentieth-century Czech author Franz Kafka, who was concerned with the alienation and dehumanization of modern man. Kafka's famous novel
The Trial
is about the incarceration of Josef K, a man who has done no wrong and whose alleged crime is never revealed to him, though he is subjected to endless interrogation.

As if to reinforce this impression, the U.S. Navy spokesman appointed to answer journalists questions about Guantanamo Bay was Lieutenant Mike Kafka.

D
OUBLE
D
IX

Theater people, like writers, are always on the lookout for good stories and so tend to notice and remember coincidences. Actor Christopher Eccleston told the author Martin Plimmer a story about the American actress Sophie Dix, who lost her purse and later found another purse in the street belonging to another woman, also named Sophie Dix.

D
OUBLE
T
AKE

Englishman David Webb's trip to America gave him a chance to discover himself.

On vacation in Florida he decided to hire a car and drive across the Everglades. Stopping for a break, he entered a roadside diner, ordered a coffee, and fell into conversation with the only other customer in the place,

As they talked, a series of extraordinary coincidences emerged. Both men were named David Webb. They were both born on the same day, December 24, of the same year. David Webb from England lived in Camden Passage in north London behind a row of antique shops. The David Webb in America had formerly lived in London where he owned one of those Camden Passage antique shops.

D-
DAY
C
ROSSWORD

On May 3, 1944, Allied war leaders became alarmed when a four-letter code word for the D-day beach assigned to the 4th U.S. Assault Division appeared as an answer in the crossword of British newspaper the
Daily Telegraph.
The word was “Utah.”

Was this just a coincidence? In previous months the words “Juno,” “Gold,” and “Sword” (all code names for beaches assigned to the British) had appeared, but they were common words in crosswords. Then on May 22, 1944, came the clue “Red Indian on the Missouri (5).” The solution was “Omaha”—code name for the D-day beach to be taken by the 1st U.S. Assault Division. It was followed by solutions including “Overlord,” the code for the whole D-day operation and “Mulberry,” the code for the floating harbors used in the landings. Finally on June 1, the solution to 15 Down was “Neptune,” the code word for the naval assault phase.

It was just four days before D-day. Two highly suspicious officers working for MI5, the British secret service, were dispatched to interrogate the
Telegraph
's crossword compiler Leonard Dawe, who was also the headmaster of London's Strand School. “They turned me inside out,” Dawe said later.

The M15 men concluded that Dawe was not a secret agent and that the sequence of compromising words was an extraordinary fluke—a coincidence. The story, with this explanation, became just another piece of the historical folklore of D-day.

It was to be another forty years before the real explanation emerged. Property manger Ronald French, responding to an article retelling the story in a newspaper, revealed that it was he, as a fourteen-year-old pupil at the school, who had inserted the words in the puzzles.

It had been his crossword-compiling headmaster's habit to invite pupils into his study and ask them to suggest “answer” words to fit the blanks in the crosswords. He would then create clues for them. French said that during the weeks before D-day he had overheard these words used by Canadian and American soldiers, who were camped close by the school, awaiting the invasion. But he insisted that the names were common knowledge. It was just times and places that were secret.

11

PARALLEL LIVES

Imagine that there is not one universe, but countless. In each, history unravels in similar, but not identical fashion. Time passes at the same rate in each of these universes but is not synchronized—the differences are staggered.

As a rule these universes are self-contained and have no influence on each other. But sometimes the fabric that separates these parallel universes is damaged and events in one existence leak into another.

That seems a perfectly plausible explanation for at least some of these following stories of parallel lives. Surely it isn't just coincidence?

O
NE
W
ANDA
T
OO
M
ANY

The odds against the coincidences that link the lives of the two Wanda Marie Johnsons are staggering. This story of almost duplicate lives was first reported in the
Washington Post
on April 20, 1978.

At the time, Wanda Marie Johnson of Adelphi, Maryland, in Prince Georges County, worked as a baggage clerk at Union Station in Washington.

The second Wanda Marie Johnson lived in Suitland, Maryland, also in Prince Georges County, and worked as a nurse at DC General Hospital in Washington.

Both women were born on June 15, 1953 and were former District of Columbia residents who moved to Prince Georges. Both had two children and both owned 1977 two-door Ford Granadas.

The eleven-digit serial numbers of their cars were the same except for the last three digits. Their Maryland driver's licences were identical because a computer determines each licence number by name and birthdate.

As a result, Wanda Marie Johnson of Adelphi became the victim of medical record mix-ups and harassment for payment of debts she didn't owe, received telephone calls from strangers, and was told by Maryland Department of Motor Vehicle officials that she must wear glasses while driving. It was the Wanda from Suitland who was shortsighted.

The problems had begun when both women still lived in the District of Columbia—one on Girard Street, the other on New Jersey Avenue.

They both had babies at Howard University Hospital and attended the same Howard clinic; Wanda of Girard Street realized something was wrong when doctors at the clinic began referring to the other Wanda's medical information.

All her efforts to trace her namesake were unsuccessful.

The two Wandas were eventually brought together by a newspaper reporter. They got on fine, but neither was prepared to change her name.

U
MBERTO
, D
EUXBERTO

Umberto the restaurant owner bore a striking resemblance to King Umberto I of Italy. He had the same name and he, too, was born on March 14, 1844, in the same town. He also married on 22 April, to a woman also called Margherita. His son, just like the king's, was called Vittorio, and on the day of the king's coronation in 1878, he opened his restaurant.

All this wouldn't have had a lot of significance had the king and the restaurant owner never met, but, just like in a fairy story, the two Umbertos' paths did cross. They were to find out that their lives had more similarities than just these simple facts.

The king had come to Monza, near Milan, to present prizes to athletes. The night before the tournament he and his aide went for dinner at Umberto's restaurant. As he sat there the king noticed the physical resemblance between Umberto and himself. He called the man over and as they swapped vital statistics the two men began to marvel. The list of similarities was teased out, savored and remarked upon and then, to top it all, they discovered they had both been decorated for bravery on the same day, on two occasions, in 1866 and in 1870. The king determined at that point to make the restaurateur a Cavaliere of the Crown of Italy and invited him to the athletics tournament the following day.

Like many a fairy tale, this one also has a violent ending. There was no sign of Umberto the next morning and when the king asked after him he was told the restaurateur had died that day in a shooting accident. Saddened, King Umberto declared that he would attend his funeral. It was never to be. The king was killed that day by three shots from the pistol of the assassin Gaetano Bresci.

N
OT
F
EELING
H
IMSELF

We like to think of coincidences as benign or amusing, but often the opposite is true. Here are the ingredients of a nightmare: two patients at the same hospital, with the same Christian name and surname, both suffering from brain tumors and nobody realizing the link between them.

In this case a simple coincidence caused weeks of fear and misunderstanding for two families, though as luck would have it, a second coincidence made the resolution of the problem possible.

When Sheila Fennell's son Stephen began a worsening sequence of depressions and blackouts, and eventually suffered a fit, his doctor arranged for him to have an electroencephalogram, or EEG test. The family then had a long and tense wait for the results. Eight weeks went by, the results hadn't arrived, and Stephen's health was rapidly deteriorating. When he suffered another fit, Sheila called an ambulance and he was admitted to the hospital. But there was still no EEG result. Another ten days went by. The hospital kept telling Sheila he'd had a scan on August 31 that had shown he was okay. Stephen hadn't had a scan on the thirty-first.

Puzzled and increasingly desperate, the Fennells began clutching at straws. Sheila remembered that her husband had once mentioned that there was a young man at the power station where he worked who was also named Stephen Fennell. It seemed unlikely but he agreed to ask that Stephen if he'd ever had a brain scan. Sure enough he had, and his family were also desperate, but for a different reason: they had received results telling them that their Stephen had a very large and inoperable brain tumor.

Of course, the results had been sent out to the wrong patients, but this brought no relief to Sheila because her son now seemed to be fighting for his life. Fortunately the tumor turned out to be benign, and though large, it was possible to drain it. Stephen started to get better and after two years began to look more like his old self.

The mix-ups weren't over though. Three years later he got a letter asking him to go to the specialist urgently. The doctor asked him if he was still getting the headaches he'd reported in March. This time they were able to direct the doctor to examine his files carefully. Once again the two files had been muddled together.

Knowing what had happened before, this was something they could easily sort out, but Sheila often wonders how the story would have ended if her husband hadn't, by coincidence, worked alongside a man called Stephen Fennell.

M
ARTIN
G
UERRE

In the summer of 1557, Frenchman Martin Guerre returned to the village of Artigat after eight years away from home fighting in the wars that culminated in August that year, in the battle of St. Quentin, in which the English and Spanish defeated the French.

Guerre, a wealthy landowner, soon settled back into family life with his wife Bertrande and his relatives. Life was comfortable, with good rents coming in from his properties. To his delight his first child, a daughter, was born.

But some among his family, in particular Guerre's younger brother Pierre, thought that the war had changed him a little more than was credible. He seemed to have forgotten expressions common to his dialect, he showed no interest in his once engrossing interests, swordplay and acrobatics, and worse, he sold off some parcels of land that had been in the family for generations.

Others in the village believed he was genuine and Bertrande, who realized he was an impostor, but preferred this warm, charming man to her rather heartless (and what's more absent) husband, insisted it was so.

A few years later Pierre, who had never stopped campaigning against the man, succeeded in having him arrested as an impostor. A long and complicated court case ensued with many witnesses called. The case went to appeal in Toulouse and due to the impossibly contradictory nature of all the many testimonies, the court was on the verge of giving the defendant the benefit of the doubt, when a one-legged man on crutches hobbled into the courtroom. Bertrande collapsed. It was the real Martin Guerre, who (perhaps having got wind of the case) had returned from Spain, where he had spent the last few years living a new life.

The truth of the story was that during a battle in Flanders, Martin Guerre had lost a leg and been left for dead on the battlefield. Another soldier, Arnaud du Tilh, came across Guerre and, realizing they looked alike, down to having the same twisted fingernail, the same four warts on the right hand and an identical scar on the forehead, concluded that his material needs would be solved if he took the place of the man he assumed to be dead. Arnaud du Tilh, a clever rascal and skilled actor, walked into the village in 1557 and took over Guerre's home.

For du Tilh there remained only the gallows. Bertrande, spared the rope because of her gender, was forced to watch the execution of the man she had grown to love and return to live with the cold man who had deserted her to live in Spain.

T
WIN
S
ISTERS

Tamara Rabi and Adriana Scott couldn't understand why strangers kept approaching them in the street claiming to know them.

The girls, both students at nearby universities in New York, grew increasingly puzzled. It happened so regularly that they started to believe they must have doubles or doppelgängers in the neighborhood.

The explanation was that Tamara and Adriana were in fact identical twin sisters, born in Mexico in 1983 and given up for adoption at birth. They were handed over to different sets of adoptive parents who had flown down from America.