- [Narrator] We're surrounded
by coincidences every day. Have you ever been
busted for a petty crime after your personal details just so happened to be
printed in the same paper as the grainy surveillance
footage from the crime? Maybe you bumped into your
real-life doppelganger in a totally different city. Stick around to find out more
about these wacky happenings, and a whole shed-load more in this episode of one in a million coincidences you'll have to see to believe. (upbeat music) The sandwich that changed history. Your high school history
teacher probably taught you that the assassination of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the event that kick
started the First World War, but what most people don't know is that the whole thing
might not have happened if it wasn't for a humble sandwich. As the story goes, the
assassins actually failed in their first attempt
to kill the archduke after their grenade
hit the car behind him, and he sped away unharmed. Understandably, his would-be killers were
pretty peeved about this. In fact, one of the men, Gavrilo Princip, was so hungry that he
stopped to grab a sandwich at a nearby cafe. While Ferdinand was
counting his lucky stars to have survived the attack, his driver, who was blissfully unaware that the pre-planned
route had been changed, took a wrong turn,
passing right by the cafe where the assassin had stopped for lunch. Seizing the opportunity not
to mess up a second time, Princip shot the archduke and
his wife from five feet away. and the rest, as they say, is history. King Umberto's Doppelganger. On July 28th, 1900, Italian King Umberto I was enjoying a meal in a Monza restaurant when the proprietor approached to greet his honorable guest. Immediately, both men were
struck by how alike they looked, and Umberto invited the
man to sit and chat. The spooky similarities
didn't stop there though: the restaurant owner
was also named Umberto, and he'd been born in Turin
on the same day as the king. If that wasn't enough, both
Umberto's had married women named Margherita on the very same day, and the restaurant owner
even opened his establishment on the day of the king's coronation. The king was so amused by
this baffling coincidence that he invited his new friend
to attend an athletics show he was scheduled to appear
at the next morning, but sadly it never came to pass. That same morning, the restaurant owner was
mysteriously shot and killed, and just a few hours later, King Umberto was also assassinated by Italian-American
anarchist Gaetano Bresci. Many have speculated that the two Umbertos were indeed long-lost
twins separated at birth, and their killer, having witnessed
the pairs chance meeting, was determined that they both die. What do you think? The Santana effect. In 2016, 17-year-old Santana
Gutierrez went viral on Twitter after posting a mind-blowing
photo of herself standing next to a total stranger who just so happened to
be her total mirror image. In September of that year, Santana, who originally
hails from Las Vegas, had driven out of town to
Fashion Valley Mall in San Diego because it was the nearest
mall with an Apple store. When she arrived, she was
randomly approached by Isobel, who was working for the
Save the Children fund, and the pair couldn't
resist snapping a photo of their incredible likeness. The photo was retweeted over 20,000 times, and a week later someone
responded with photos of their friend who also
looked exactly like Santana. By now, things were
starting to get real freaky, and yet still more Twitter users weighed in with their very own
versions of the 17-year-old. Either there's some Santana Gutierrez cloning machine out there somewhere, or her parents have got some
serious explaining to do. Undercover ships. When it started to look like World War I was gonna get pretty gnarly, the German army decided
to convert a cruise liner named the SMS Cap Trafalgar
into an armed merchant cruiser. To protect their shiny new
battleship from potential damage, they agreed upon a rather sneaky tactic, they'd disguise the Trafalgar as the British Liner RMS Carmania. Unfortunately for them,
the Trafalgar was attacked and sunk off the coast of Brazil in 1914, and its attacker was none other
than the real RMS Carmania, which had also recently been converted into an armed merchant cruiser. As if that wasn't bizzaro enough, it turns out the Germans
weren't alone in their scheming, because the Brits had also
disguised the RMS Carmania to look like the SMS Trafalgar. To recap: the SMS Trafalgar, which was actually the RMS Carmania, sunk the SMS Trafalgar, which was disguised as the RMS Carmania. I think I need a lie down now, just stick to your own
ships from now on, okay? Sisters on shift. Some coincidences are definitely enough to make you believe in fate, like the amazing story of
these long-lost sisters who were reunited in
the most unexpected way. Holly Hoyle O'Brien,
originally named Pok-nam Shin was adopted by an American couple in 1978 when she was just nine years old, and never forgot about
her younger half-sister, who was taken by her stepmother. Holly's adoptive mother
even called the orphanage where the sisters had lived, but they had no record
of her biological sister, so young Holly started to lose hope. That is, until Holly landed a new job at Bayfront Health Port Charlotte in 2015, working on the fourth floor
with the medical surgical unit. Three months later, Holly was scheduled to work
a 7 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. shift and was joined by a new
nurse named Megan Hughes, who was also from Korea. As the two women got to
know each other better, it became clear that they shared too many similarities to ignore. That summer, a DNA test
confirmed their suspicions, they were actually long-lost sisters. What are the odds? Man's best friend. In the throes of World War II in 1942, army veteran Don Karkos was
hit by some rogue shrapnel that gashed across his forehead and blinded him in his right eye. Various doctors tried in vain for 64 years to restore Don's sight, until something miraculously
unexpected happened in 2006. 84-year-old Don was
working as a security guard on a paddock at the
Monticello Raceway racecourse in New York when he was headbutted
by a pedigree racehorse while slipping a collar around its chest. Although the impact threw
him back against a wall, he was mostly unharmed, other than feeling a little dazed. Later that night, though,
the unbelievable happened, Don started to regain his lost vision. Although it's still not perfect, Don can now see about 15
feet with his damaged eye. Dr. Douglas Lozzaro, the head of ophthalmology at
Long Island College Hospital, said the blow could have knocked a dislocate lens into place,
but no one is exactly sure what happened to restore his sight. It's not often someone can
describe being headbutted by a horse as a miracle. Front page news. On Christmas day in 2007, the
Lewiston Tribune newspaper in Idaho published the CCTV image of a man who'd stolen a
woman's purse from a store in the hope that someone
could identify him. Despite their valiant efforts, the reality of finding
this rather nondescript man based on one grainy image was like looking for a
needle in a haystack. Hope wasn't lost yet, though,
because there was one big clue about the man's identity,
just an inch up the page. Also on the front page that
day was a festive photograph taken by the paper's
photographer, Kyle Mills, which showed a man in a
blue and black checked coat, painting Christmas greetings
on storefront windows. Now, anyone with the slightest experience playing those spot the difference games would be able to notice
that's the same dude. In fact, Mills' photograph
even identified the man as Michael Millhouse of
Millhouse Signs in Lewiston. Copy editors contacted the police after noticing the glaring printing error, and Millhouse was immediately
arrested for stealing, which he protested by saying that intended to return
the wallet but forgot. I guess he forgot to return the $600 of the woman's cash, too. If you have any one in
a million coincidences you'd like to share, get in touch with me at
coincidences@beamazed.com. I'd love to hear them. And who knows, you might just be featured
in the next installment. Saved by the belt. There are plenty of amazing
war stories out there, but I'll bet you've
never heard the one about the World War II seaman
and his lucky lifebelt. During the summer of 1942, Eglin Staples was a
crewman on the USS Astoria, which was in the fight for
control of Guadalcanal. After completing his watch one night, Staples was awoken by an explosion of enemy fire above deck. He instinctively threw his
lifebelt on before going to help, but the deck quickly gave way, plunging him into the water. After floating for four hours, he was eventually rescued
by another U.S. ship, but his luck was still down,
because this one sunk too, depositing poor Staples
back into the ocean. Once again, Staples' life was
saved by his lucky lifebelt. When he examined the belt more closely, he noticed it hailed from
his hometown of Akron, Ohio, so he decided to keep it as a souvenir. While sharing his stories with
his families after the war, Staples' mother proudly declared that she'd also done her part by working at a local Firestone plant, which manufactured lifebelts. Things went from coincidental
to downright freaky when Staples' mother inspected the belt and noticed her own
inspectors number on it, which means she had personally approved and stamped the very device
that saved her sons life, twice! The unlucky Bermuda taxi. Not all coincidences are so fortunate, and if you ever feel down on your luck, just remember this tale of two brothers, one bike and one very unfortunate cab. On the night of July 18, 1975,
17-year-old Erskine Ebbin was tragically struck and killed by a taxi while riding his moped in
Hamilton, the capital of Bermuda. What made this accident so
spooky was that Erskine's brother was also killed almost
exactly a year earlier, on July 30th, 1974 on
the same intersection known as Hog Bay Level,
also by a rogue taxi. Oh, and he was riding
the exact same moped. If all that wasn't Final
Destination enough for you already, get this: it was the same
taxi driver, Williard Manders, who happened to be carrying
the same passenger, John Henry Ebbin, each time. Talk about bad juju. This probably all seems
too strange to be true, but analysts have since
noted that as Bermuda is a small island with a small population, the likelihood of this
creepy coincidence happening, while slim, is still entirely possible. The Erdington Cases. Coincidences don't get much
creepier than this case of two unmistakeably
similar unsolved crimes that occurred 157 years apart in the historical suburb of
Erdington in Birmingham, UK. At around 6:30 a.m. on May 27th, 1817, a laborer named George
Jackson came across the body of a 20-year-old woman a local water pit. The woman was identified
as a Mary Ashford, and she had met with a
friend the night before to attend a dance in celebration of the historic Whit
Monday at Tyburn Hall. That night, Ashford
had met and walked home with a man named Abraham
Thornton at about 4 a.m., the prime suspect in her untimely demise. However, thanks to witness testimonies, Thornton was acquitted of the crime and the case remained unsolved. Flash forward exactly 157
years to May 27th, 1974, and history was about to repeat itself. The life of another 20-year-old
woman named Barbara Forrest was mysteriously snuffed out,
and she was found in a ditch a few days later with
similar injuries to Ashford. On that fateful evening,
Forrest had also attended dance with her boyfriend in the
spirit of Whit Monday. The police eventually zoned
in on a prime suspect: Forrest's co-worker, Michael Ian Thornton. Miraculously, Thornton
was once again acquitted, leaving the crime unsolved. To make matters worse, both women are reported
to have told friends that they had a bad feeling on
the evening of their demise. Did it just get cold in here? Close call. If ever you needed
reminding of the importance of personal protective
equipment in the workplace, just take a look at this
seriously fortunate soul named Jerimiah. Jerimiah happened to be
wearing his safety goggles while angle grinding when this
cutting wheel split in half launched in his direction, and
thanks to his smart thinking, he still has his right eye. Remember kids: coincidences aren't always
gonna save your life, but following the right safety
precautions probably will. Almost screwed. Sometimes it seems like
luck really is on your side. Can you imagine the sigh of
relief the owner of this vehicle breathed when they pulled up
to discover that their fate had been hanging in the
balance the whole journey home? This is like the equivalent
of stepping on a giant nail and having it pierce through your shoe right between your toes. Sometimes life can't help
but try and screw you. Killer shot. There's no denying that flies are the most downright irritating insects in the animal kingdom. After all, there's nothing
quite as frustrating as settling down in bed only to be kept awake
by persistent buzzing. Anyone who's spent an
eon chasing a trapped fly around the house armed
with a fly-swatter before, will know how hard it is
to land the money shot, but take a look at this
unbelievable coincidence. Poor buddy looks like he's
trapped in a headlock. Bet he didn't see that one coming. Matchy-Matchy. How many times have you accidentally picked up a friend's phone and immediately realized it wasn't yours because you're so used to
seeing your own wallpaper? People choose all sorts of things as their phone backgrounds, from pets to romantic
partners and holiday snaps, so it's not often you find
someone whose phone screen looks exactly like yours. Well, this person took
that to the next level when they found themselves
driving behind a truck advertising the beautiful city of Bruges, only to realize the stretch of
canal was the exact same part they'd snapped and saved
as their wallpaper. Who'd have thunk it, eh? Have you experienced any unbelievable
coincidences like these ones? Send them my way at hello@beamazed.com and I might just include
them in the next episode. As always, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)
