The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines coincidence the following way:
1 : the act or condition of coinciding : CORRESPONDENCE
2 : the occurrence of events that happen at the same time by accident but seem to have some connection; also : any of these occurrences

Coincidence is a strange thing indeed. Sometimes things are so coincidental that it seems uncanny. Other times explanations of coincidence are carried out to such an extreme it seems that someone is trying to force you to think that something that was not a coincidence was coincidental In an article in the Skeptical Inquirer magazine called 'Coincidences:Remarkable or Random?' by Bruce Martin, Mr. Martin states that we tend to overlook the many improbable events that occur to other people.

Lets look at some coincidences.

The attack of 9/11 finds the number 11 in many places. The first plane to hit the towers was American Airlines flight 11. 911 is the police emergency telephone number. The call letter for the flight were AA11. Since A is the first letter of the alphabet A-1, so AA11=11 11. The flight had 11 crew members. New York City has 11 letters. Manhattan was discovered on September 11. The two World Trade Towers look like the number 11. The death toll was 2801, 2+8+0+1=11. We find the number 11 in many more places like the length of Saudi Arabia, George W. Bush, Afghanistan. There are at least fifty other instances which I haven't mentioned where one might try and make a case for the number 11 appearing.

A person could argue that everything that happens to one during his lifetime is a coincidence. Meeting one's husband or wife for the first time means that you were at the same place at the same time or you wouldn't have met. I called these ordinary coincidences, they are the type of coincidences that happen to all of us. If you didn't apply for a certain job at a certain time you may never have got it so here we have another ordinary coincidence. If you didn't live in a certain area at a certain time you may never have met your best friend. I think you can see from these examples what I mean by ordinary coincidences. But it the odd coincidences that are hard to explain, especially those coincidences that require many unusual things to happen that cause these odd coincidences. I saw this quote the other day, "Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous".

US Navy memo reporting sinking of the Titanic
Photo Source: US Navy

In 1892 William T. Steed published a book about a cruise ship that hit an iceberg and sank. In 1912 he was a passenger on the Titanic and went down with the ship. The Titanic itself was full of coincidences. A woman, Mrs. Marshall on seeing the Titanic got a terrible premonition and grabbing her husband's arm screamed that the ship was going to sink. No one listened and unfortunately her mother had booked passage on the Titanic and she didn't know it. So far about 20 people have been discovered who didn't board the Titanic because they felt something terrible was going to happen. When the Titanic sank it had been carrying many cursed Egyptian artifacts and mummies.

In 1939 a ship was in the general area of where the Titanic sunk, the ships name was the Titanian. A helmsman had a terrible premonition and stopped the ship which then hit an iceberg, damaging the ship but not sinking it because of the reduced speed.

I remember a coincidence that happened to a fellow worker. He took his wife on a vacation to Indonesia and went to the island Java. On Java he decided to get a drink so he and his wife went into one of the bars on the island. They sat down and ordered a drink then they noticed something they couldn't believe, in the bar was someone he worked with.

President Lincoln had a dream that he was going to be assassinated Three days later at the Ford Theater he was shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth

There is a story about a man who was killed on a moped in Bermuda. He had been struck by a taxi. His brother was killed a year later in the same place. He was ridding the same moped. He was hit by the same taxi, driven by the same driver and the passenger was the same passenger that was in the taxi when his brother was killed.

Picture Source: Lincoln Papers US Government

The Lincoln Kennedy coincidences:

Lincoln was elected as President in 1850
Kennedy was elected as President in 1960
Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846
Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946
Both Lincoln and Kennedy were shot in the head
Both Lincoln and Kennedy died on Friday
Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy
Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln
Both Lincoln and Kennedy had seven letters in their names
Both Lincoln and Kennedy were succeeded by southerners
Both of the successors were named Johnson
Andrew Johnson who succeeded Lincoln was born in 1808
Lyndon Johnson who succeeded Kennedy was born in 1908.
Lincoln was shot in a theatre built by Ford
Kennedy was shot in a car built by Ford
Both assassins had three word names, Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth
Both assassins had fifteen letters in their names
Neither assassin made it to trial

The funny thing about coincidences is that if you look hard enough you are sure to find some and not everyone will agree on what is a coincidence or not. If one person is born in 1909 and does something and another is born in 2009 and does something, is that ever a coincidence? If you look at the above coincidences you may not agree that they are all coincidences and who could blame you? But it doe make interesting reading, doesn't it?