An American oddity

[Russ B]

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.

Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.

Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Lincoln was shot at the theatre named 'Ford.'
Kennedy was shot in a car called 'Lincoln' made by 'Ford.'

Lincoln was shot in a theatre and his assassin ran and hid in warehouse.
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin ran and hid in a theatre.

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was in...er, I mean with Marilyn Monroe.

[Jules]

That is spooky

[Russ B]

Not when you then read http://www.snopes.com/history/american/linckenn.htm

[Damien]

Obviously this is the work of a cult! Where you all of you when lincon and kennedy were shot?

[quadplay]

Does this mean we can expect it to happen all over again with whomever should be elected President in 2060?

[Theodoric]

Originally Posted by Russ D

Not when you then read http://www.snopes.com/history/american/linckenn.htm

Good old Snopes! It should be the first port of call whenever you come across one of these astonishing claims.

For example, you're likely to come across things like Coca Cola being able to dissolve a nail because it contains phosphoric acid. Yes it does, but at far too low a concentration to be able to dissolve a nail. As I said, check Snopes first before you start believing any particularly wild claim on the Internet.

[BBKing]

In fact, check snopes before reading anything, ever. It's got more interesting facts than practically any other site on the net, with the added benefit of being true. It's also a good education in what rubbish people will believe, for you budding conmen out there.

[jtwn]

Man that site sometimes annoys me.

The thing is the site concludes "The coincidences are easily explained as the simple product of mere chance" - eh??? We know that already

[BBKing]

Don't forget to check out the 'Lost Legends' section next time you're there.

[Halcyon]

lol thats quite bizarre how all these are related.
Spooky.

[Theodoric]

Originally Posted by Halcyon

lol thats quite bizarre how all these are related.
Spooky.

Not really bizarre, just an example of the human instinct to find patterns in things. There are probably thousands of things that could be, but aren't, common to Lincoln and Kennedy. I'm sure that you could produce a much longer list showing all the things were there isn't any relationship.

As the Snopes article shows, some of these relationships have plausible explanations and some are simply not true. You end up with a much smaller list of not easily explainable co-incidences. Co-incidences happen. What would be really suspicious was if you could find no co-incidences whatsoever between the lives of Lincoln and Kennedy.

It's like those claims that you sometimes see where someone reports that they had a premonition of the death of a friend and, lo and behold, a few days letter they find that it's true. What is never mentioned are all the premonitions that never come true.

[BBKing]

It also depends on the fact that humans aren't blessed with an intuition about mathematical probability - we seem to be better at some maths problems (often not being aware of them, like solving simultaneous equations of motion, which we do every time we drive, or pattern matching, as Theo points out) than others.

Probability needs to be studied before you can do this, which is why lotteries work and people think that pure coincidence is evidence of some underlying process - our pattern recognition lets us down here, as the obvious patterns aren't evidence of anything other than a carefully chosen set of statements *designed* to fool us - as snopes points out, once you add a complete set of statements about the two men the coincidences are drowned out by the dissimilarities.

The on-a-Friday one is clear evidence of this - the probability that two events happened on the same day of the week is the fairly high 1 in 7 (if you don't care about the day) while it's 1 in 49 if you specify the day. It's like the one about 22 random people being more likely than not to have a pair sharing a birthday - probability relies as much on what *isn't* mentioned as what is, which is why it leads us astray.

Originally Posted by Theodoric

Good old Snopes! It should be the first port of call whenever you come across one of these astonishing claims.

Even if you remove the items that are simply wrong, it still leaves a good number of coincidences.

And you can only explain away so many coincidences before that effort itself starts looking like a conspiracy!

Apart from looking at the specific probabilities of some of these coincidences arising, when they all happen, you have to multiply all of them together!

Originally Posted by Theodoric

For example, you're likely to come across things like Coca Cola being able to dissolve a nail because it contains phosphoric acid.

I don't think it does any more. Anyway, I never heard of it dissolving metal, but I know my brother would use it to free rusted nuts/bolts years ago when it did.

[Theodoric]

Originally Posted by ScaredWebWarrior

<Snip>
Apart from looking at the specific probabilities of some of these coincidences arising, when they all happen, you have to multiply all of them together!
<Snip>

Multiplication of probabilities is only allowable if each co-incidence is totally independent of the others. You need to show this first.