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President Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt on March 30, 1981. This picture was taken shortly before the incident.
The man in the white raincoat is Secret Service agent Jerry Parr; after the shooting, it was Parr who pushed Reagan into a limousine, noticed he was bleeding, and directed the driver to take them to a hospital, probably saving Reagan’s life.
Parr had been inspired to pursue his career by the 1939 film The Code of the Secret Service, in which dashing agent “Brass” Bancroft survives a shooting in Mexico. Bancroft was played by a 28-year-old Ronald Reagan.
You have to wonder what Jerry Parr thought of the coincidence. According to the book Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan, Parr believed afterward that saving the president’s life was God’s plan for him. When he retired from the Secret Service, he became a minister. Link -via Nag on the Lake
If you’re married, you’ve almost certainly misplaced your wedding ring at one place or another and even if you’ve never actually lost it, you probably know someone else who has. After all, a little band of gold or platinum is pretty easy to lose track of, even if it is important to hold on to. But while many people lose their rings, it’s pretty rare to actually find them again. Even so, it has been known to happen. Here are some of the most amazing stories of people who have lost their wedding or engagement rings, only to find them again.
Image Via Jason Pier in DC [Flickr]
Anthea Capewell lost her wedding ring and engagement ring in 1976, when they fell off her finger as she closed her garden gate. After a long and thorough search, she and her husband could only find the engagement ring. Eight years later, the couple moved out of the house, which is why it was even more amazing that 33 years after the ring was lost, Anthea received a call from her old neighbor who claimed to have found the ring. The neighbors discovered the ring buried in some weeds underneath a hedge that was shared by the two homes.
The discovery was such a pleasant surprise for the couple that Anthea and her husband immediately decided to renew their wedding vows in the next year.
In 1974, a year after Donna Claver was married, the pregnant woman set her engagement ring on the tank lid of her toilet while she put lotion on. Unfortunately, the ring slipped into the bowl. Despite Donna and husband Terry’s best efforts, including unbolting the toilet and shaking it vigorously, the ring was stuck inside the hole at the bottom of the bowl and couldn’t be removed. Because the couple was too poor to afford a new toilet, they eventually gave up and put the fixture back in place, expecting to never retrieve their lost ring.
As the years went by, the Clavers moved out of the home and it was sold over and over, but just last year, Terry happened to be roofing a house across the street from his old home when he noticed the new owners carrying the toilet to the trash. Remembering his wife’s lost ring, Terry climbed off the roof and told the gentlemen he’d be happy to throw the toilet away for them. He then took the fixture to his shop and broke it with a sledgehammer. Finally, the ring was free.
Amazingly, after a little cleaning, the ring still looked brand new 36 years later.
Toy surprises are usually reserved for cereals and Cracker Jack boxes, that’s why when Krista Berg discovered a man’s wedding ring in the bag of NutroMax she bought for her pup Otto, she figured it wasn’t meant as a bonus gift. Whereas most people would probably invoke the law of finder’s keepers, Krista decided to call around. When no one at the dog food plant had lost their ring, she tried calling the store where she bought the food and got in touch with Mike Stoddard, the rightful owner of the wedding ring. Mike was glad that Krista found his ring and not someone else, noting, “most people would just keep it.”
When 77 year-old Bridget Pericolo put her wedding and engagement rings into a Dixie cup for safe keeping, she certainly didn’t expect the adventure that followed. It all started when her husband thought the cup was trash and tossed it away with the rest of the garbage.
Unfortunately, by that time, the local trash truck had already come by and collected the couple’s garbage bags. Bridget immediately called the local sanitation department, only to have the supervisor tell her that the truck couldn’t be stopped until the end of their route.
more …
The moral of the story is: if you are going to sail off the coast of Wales on December 5th, you may want to change your name to Hugh Williams. But is this a true story? Any records from these incidences seem to be at least second-hand. I found a post at The Scuttlefish that may shed a bit of light on how “coincidental” the story really is. And be sure to check out the comment from Hugh Williams. Link
John Krayeski of West Palm Beach, Florida, was spear fishing in the waters off Singer Island, specifically at an artificial reef called the Triangle on Mothers Day. A responsible diver, he often picks up trash he sees underwater. On this trip, he picked up an old JC Penney credit card. Back on land, he read the name on the card: Jack Jacobs. He knew the guy!
“I said to my friends, ‘We did an addition to this guy’s house a while back,” said Krayeski.
At his office, he compared the signature to contracts in his files.
Sure enough, the brown-and-white card belonged to Jack Jacobs, a Delray Beach caterer.
Jacobs’ wife told Krayeski that they never had a card from JC Penney, but later Jack Jacobs called and said he’d lost that card 25 years ago, before he was ever married! However, he had no idea how it ended up a mile out at sea.
“I told John I’m going to drop another credit card in the ocean and he has 25 years to find it.”
“Make it a gold American Express and I’ll find it a lot sooner,” Krayeski said.
Link -via Fortean Times
(Image credit: Libby Volgyes/Palm Beach Post)
Joe Diffie had a song called “Third Rock from the Sun” about an unbelievable chain of events. A traffic accident in New Zealand is almost as strange. A motorist was traveling near the town of Kaponga Friday night when he hit a cow, killing it.
The animal was thrown over the top of the car, peeling back the bonnet and shattering the windscreen. The car smashed into a pole which caused a power surge to race along the wires into the farmer’s house.
The same surge blew up the cowshed meter board and set it on fire. However, it melted a water line directly above which extinguished the blaze.
The driver was not seriously injured. Link -via Fark
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Either this is the strangest coincidence ever, or there’s more to the story. In a nutshell (or dumpster bin):
1. Man was walking when someone told him that there’s a newborn crying in the dumpster.
2. Man rescued baby.
3. Man found out later that HE was the father of said baby (he didn’t know his girlfriend was pregnant)
Is this a made for Lifetime story? You betcha:
"A girl said, ‘I think I hear a baby in the Dumpster.’ With
no knowledge at the time that this is my kid whatsoever, I went running over there, stood beside the Dumpster, heard the baby cry," he said."I jumped in and removed the stuff. I personally opened the bag and uncovered all the stuff off," he said.
"My first sight of my baby was covered in garbage."
Jason van Rassel and Stephane Massinon of the Calgary Herald has more: Link (Photo: Leah Hennel/Calgary Herald) – via XOXO Jes
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Strange but true, never underestimate strange occurances in this world. Here is some very wierd occurrencies that go beyond the big cases you are familiar with.
Circumstantial Evidence? …English politician and justice of the peace Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was found murdered on October 17, 1678. His body had been left in a ditch on Greenberry Hill in London. Three men were arrested and tried for the crime. Their names were Robert Green, Henry Berry, and Lawrence Hill.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Adam Kommel was perusing Google Maps, looking for open swaths of green one day when he accidentally stumbled across this field near Minden, Nebraska. It looks just like Nebraska, and a casual search finds little more information than what Strange Maps has:
The only other pattern thriving in this checkered landscape is the circle, touching the edges of many squares (as seen on the left of this picture): a sign of the popular method of centre-pivot irrigation. As pretty as that might look from the sky, all these squares and circles are practical first and foremost. This is not a topology of frivolity. Why lose a bit of perfectly arable land only to sculpt something as pointless as a map?
The mysterious Nebraska Field does not seem to have achieved even local fame. The town of Minden only boasts a Pioneer Museum, and each December hyper-decorates itself to defend its reputation as Christmas City.
Link | Here’s the Google Map.
For 11 years, Mike Bowes has been working as a 911 dispatcher for the Quincy Police Department in Massachusetts. He’s heard of everything from baby deliveries to deaths, but this call was probably the most shocking to him: it was someone reporting that his own house was on fire!
My neighbor’s house just blew up, the caller said.
"What’s the address?" Mike Bowes asked patiently, just as he did with every emergency call for the past 11 years with the Quincy Police Department.
The caller frantically relayed the address, Bowes’ home address for 20 years.
"It was shocking," Mike Bowes said. "I thought she was kidding. It’s a long shot. I mean, what’s the chances it will be your house?"
Link (Photo: WHDH)
Months later, I received an email from a William Diesslin, regarding my photos of Matten:
You didn’t know it at the time, but you photographed my great
grandfather’s store front! I’ve attached the photo for your reference.”
I scoured my photos until I found what seemed to be a match for the historic black and white picture Diesslin had sent. During the next few weeks, I learned the rest of the story. Diesslin’s search for his ancestry had been unsuccessful until he discovered my blog. Once he saw my photo he was able to identify the present day building and track down the owners, who confirmed the store had originally belonged to his great grandfather.
In a subsequent email he remarked:
"This will be a landmark for my family as my dad was orphaned at 14
years old, all family history was lost. Your photos may have opened up
a long lost link to my ancestors.”
There’s more to the story, like the fact that Diesslin stayed in that very building (it is now a hostel) back in the 1980′s and had abslutely no idea that it had any connection to his family. The series of coincidences are so bizarre as to be almost unbelievable. To read the rest of the story, and to see the histoic and present day photos, visit Hole In The Donut Travel Blog.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by baweibel.
