Your Creative Mind

Nine

Creating Coincidences

ON JULY 4, 1826, John Adams, the second president of the United States, and Thomas Jefferson, the third president, died exactly 50 years after both men had signed the Declaration of Independence. Biographer B.L. Rayner wrote of the event, “The extraordinary coincidence in the death of these great men is without parallel in the records of history.”¹

The most straightforward definition of “coincidence” is two or more events occurring simultaneously. Of course it has also come to mean two things happening at the same time in a way that is both remarkable and apparently unplanned by the people involved. For example, you find out you are going to have a baby, and you see a maternity shop down the street from your office. ...