【往期回顾】
【本期内容】
6 Famous Coincidences
史上6个著名的巧合
History is full of bizarre, seemingly impossible coincidences. Check out six stories that may sound unbelievable - but are all true.
历史上充满了离奇的、看似不可能的巧合。看看下面这6个听起来难以置信的故事，但都是真实的。
1. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died hours apart on the same day: July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of American independence.
托马斯·杰斐逊和约翰·亚当斯在同一天去世，相隔数小时：1826年7月4日，美国独立50周年纪念日。
When the Continental Congress convened in 1775 in Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams became fast friends. The tall, lanky Virginian and stocky Massachusetts native worked together to draft the Declaration of Independence and spent time together as diplomats for the new United States in Europe. Their relationship frayed, however, when Jefferson succeeded Adams as president in 1801. On opposite sides of the Republican and Federalist divide, the two men remained estranged until 1812, when Adams sent Jefferson a New Year’s greeting. Their reconciliation spawned a remarkable correspondence that lasted for nearly 15 years. On July 4, 1826, as the country celebrated 50 years since declaring its independence from Great Britain, the 83-year-old Jefferson passed away at his Virginia estate, Monticello. The 90-year-old Adams, on his own deathbed in Quincy, Massachusetts, and unaware of his friend’s death, whispered a few last (sadly mistaken) words: “Thomas Jefferson survives.”
1775年，当大陆会议在费城召开时，托马斯·杰斐逊和约翰·亚当斯成为了亲密的朋友。这位身材瘦高的弗吉尼亚人和身材敦实的马萨诸塞州本地人共同起草了《独立宣言》，并作为新美国驻欧洲的外交官度过了一段时间。然而，当杰斐逊于1801年接替亚当斯成为总统时，他们的关系破裂了。在共和党人和联邦党人的对立一边，两人一直保持着隔阂，直到1812年亚当斯向杰斐逊致以新年问候。他们的和解促成了长达近15年的非凡通信。1826年7月4日，在该国庆祝脱离英国独立50周年之际，83岁的杰斐逊在弗吉尼亚州的蒙蒂塞洛庄园去世。90岁的亚当斯在马萨诸塞州昆西市弥留之际，不知道朋友的死讯，低声说了最后的遗言（令人遗憾的是，他错了）：“托马斯·杰斐逊活了下来。”
History added a postscript to this remarkable coincidence in 1831 when James Monroe became the third of the first five U.S. presidents to die on Independence Day. James Madison, Jefferson’s close friend and fellow Virginian who succeeded him in the White House, died on June 28, 1836, after refusing stimulants offered by his doctors in order to prolong his life until July 4.
1831年，詹姆斯·门罗成为第一批在独立日去世的五位美国总统中的第三位，历史为这一非凡的巧合又加了一笔。詹姆斯·麦迪逊是杰斐逊的密友，也是接替他入主白宫的弗吉尼亚人，他于1836年6月28日去世，之前他拒绝了医生为延长其生命直到7月4日而提供的兴奋剂。
2. Less than a year before John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln, Booth’s brother Edwin saved the life of Lincoln’s eldest son, Robert.
在约翰·威尔克斯·布斯杀害亚伯拉罕·林肯前不到一年，布斯的哥哥埃德温救了林肯长子罗伯特的命。
Unlike his now-notorious brother, Edwin Booth was a devoted supporter of the Union during the Civil War - but he also had a more personal connection to the martyred President Abraham Lincoln. In late 1864, Lincoln’s son Robert Todd was traveling via train from New York to Washington, D.C. During a stop in Jersey City, New Jersey, he stepped back on the crowded platform to let others pass by, pressing his back against a stopped train. When the train began to move, Lincoln fell onto the tracks and would have been gravely injured - or worse - if a stranger hadn’t caught him by the collar and hauled him back onto the platform. As he later wrote, Lincoln immediately recognized his savior as the famous stage actor Edwin Booth and thanked him. For his part, Booth only later learned the identity of the man he had rescued. His friend Adam Badeau, a colonel in the Union Army, wrote the actor to congratulate him for saving the president’s son, who by then was serving as Badeau’s fellow officer on General Ulysses S. Grant’s staff.
与他现在臭名昭著的兄弟不同，埃德温·布斯在内战期间是联邦的忠实支持者，但他也与殉难的亚伯拉罕·林肯总统有着更私人的联系。1864年末，林肯的儿子罗伯特·托德乘坐火车从纽约前往华盛顿特区。在新泽西州泽西市停留期间，他在拥挤的站台上后退，让其他人通过，背靠着停下来的火车。当火车开始开动时，林肯倒在了轨道上，如果不是一个陌生人抓住他的衣领并把他拖回站台，他可能会受重伤，甚至更糟。正如他后来所写的那样，林肯立即认出了他的救世主，即著名的舞台演员埃德温·布斯，并向他表示感谢。就布斯而言，他后来才知道他所救的那个人的身份。他的朋友亚当·巴多是联邦军的一名上校，他写信给这位演员，祝贺他救了总统的儿子，当时总统的儿子是巴多在尤利西斯·S·格兰特将军手下的战友。
3. Robert Lincoln was on the scene for not one, not two, but three presidential assassinations.
罗伯特·林肯不是一次，也不是两次，而是三次置身总统暗杀现场。
Less than a month after sitting at his father’s deathbed in April 1865, Robert Todd Lincoln resigned his U.S. Army commission and moved to Chicago with his distraught mother. He later married, had children and established a successful law practice. He also remained active in politics, accepting the post of secretary of war in the administration of President James A. Garfield in 1881. That July, Lincoln was at the railroad station in Washington, ready to travel to New Jersey with Garfield, who had been in office less than two months at the time. Before their train left the station, however, a deranged, disgruntled office-seeker named Charles Guiteau shot Garfield in the back; the president died of complications from the wound two months later.
1865年4月，罗伯特·托德·林肯在父亲病逝不到一个月后，辞去了美国陆军委员会的职务，与悲痛欲绝的母亲搬到了芝加哥。后来，他结婚生子，并建立了一个成功的律师事务所。他还积极参与政治，1881年在詹姆斯·A·加菲尔德总统的政府中接受了战争部长的职位。那年7月，林肯在华盛顿的火车站，准备和当时上任不到两个月的加菲尔德一起前往新泽西州。然而，在他们的火车离开车站之前，一个名叫查尔斯·吉托的精神错乱、心怀不满的求职者向加菲尔德的背部开枪；两个月后，总统因伤口并发症去世。
In 1901, President William McKinley invited Lincoln to Buffalo, New York to attend the Pan-American Exposition. Lincoln arrived while the event was already in progress and was heading to meet the president when the anarchist Leon Czolgosz fatally shot McKinley in the chest and abdomen in front of a crowd of well-wishers. Lincoln, who in the latter part of his career served as president of the Pullman Company, was said to have wryly remarked that there was “a certain fatality about the presidential function when I am present.”
1901年，威廉·麦金利总统邀请林肯到纽约水牛城参加泛美博览会。林肯抵达时，活动已经在进行中，正准备会见总统时，无政府主义者莱昂·佐尔戈兹在一群祝福者面前开枪，致命击中了麦金利的胸部和腹部。林肯在其职业生涯的后半段曾担任普尔曼公司的总裁，据说他曾讽刺地说，“当我在场时，总统的职能有一定的致命性。”
4. The Civil War began in Wilmer McLean’s front yard…and ended in his front parlor.
美国内战从威尔默·麦克莱恩的前院开始……然后在他的客厅结束。
In the summer of 1861, Wilmer McLean and his family were living on his wife’s plantation near Manassas Junction, Virginia. As Union forces approached, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard took over the farm as his headquarters. On July 21, 1861, Confederate and Union troops clashed in the first major battle of the Civil War along the small stream known as Bull Run, which ran through McLean’s property. A second major battle—the Second Battle of Bull Run—took place on the same ground in August 1862.
1861年夏天，威尔默·麦克莱恩和他的家人住在弗吉尼亚州马纳萨斯枢纽附近他妻子的种植园里。随着联邦军队的逼近，邦联将军博瑞德接管了农场作为他的总部。1861年7月21日，邦联和联邦军队在南北战争的第一场重大战役中，沿着流经麦克莱恩庄园的一条名为Bull Run的小溪发生冲突。1862年8月，第二场重大战役——第二次布尔朗战役——在同一地点发生。
By the end of 1863, McLean and his family had relocated to the small hamlet of Appomattox Court House, some 120 miles southwest of Manassas Junction. McLean, who supplied sugar to the Confederate Army, was in Appomattox on April 9, 1865, when Confederate Colonel Charles Marshal approached him for assistance finding a suitable place to host a meeting between General Robert E. Lee and his Union counterpart, Ulysses S. Grant. That afternoon, Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Grant in McLean’s parlor, which Union troops later stripped for mementos of the historic occasion. McLean put the “Surrender House” on the market a year later. He wanted to return to Manassas, which he did in 1867, though he never sold the Appomattox house. Instead, he defaulted on the property, and it was sold at public auction in 1869. Now operated by the National Park Service, the McLean Home opened to the public in 1949.
1863年底，麦克莱恩和他的家人搬到了马纳萨斯枢纽西南约120英里的阿波马托克斯法院的小村庄。1865年4月9日，向邦联军队供应糖的麦克莱恩在阿波马托克斯，当时邦联上校查尔斯·马歇尔向他寻求帮助，为罗伯特·E·李将军和他的联邦对手尤利西斯·S·格兰特寻找合适的地方举行会议。当天下午，李在麦克莱恩的客厅里向格兰特献降了他的北弗吉尼亚军队，后来联邦军队为了纪念这一历史性时刻脱衣庆祝。一年后，麦克莱恩将“投降屋”推向市场。他想回到马纳萨斯，1867年他这样做了，尽管他从未卖掉阿波马托克斯的房子。相反，他拖欠了这笔财产的款项，并于1869年公开拍卖。麦克莱恩之家现在由国家公园管理局运营，于1949年向公众开放。
5. Mark Twain came into the world with Halley’s Comet and, just as he predicted, went out with it.
马克·吐温是和哈雷彗星一起来到这个世界的，而且正如他自己所预测的那样，他也是跟着哈雷彗星一起离开的。
The periodic comet known as Halley’s Comet returns to Earth’s vicinity about every 75 years, give or take a bit due to the gravitational pull of the planets it passes. Back in the 18th century, English astronomer Edmond Halley concluded that reports of a comet appearing in 1531, 1607 and 1682 actually referred to the same comet returning in periodic intervals; he predicted the comet’s reappearance in 1758 (though he died before the prediction came true). Halley’s Comet was in the skies again when the celebrated author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, was born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. By 1909, 74 years had passed, and Twain offered a prediction that his own death would—like his birth—coincide with the comet’s appearance. He was quoted as saying: “It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together’.”
这颗被称为哈雷彗星的周期性彗星大约每75年返回一次地球附近，由于其经过的行星的引力，它会或多或少地返回一次。早在18世纪，英国天文学家埃德蒙德·哈雷就得出结论，1531年、1607年和1682年出现的彗星报告实际上指的是同一颗彗星周期性地返回；他在1758年预言了彗星的再次出现（尽管他在预言成真之前就去世了）。1835年11月30日，著名作家塞缪尔·兰霍恩·克莱门斯（更为人所知的名字是马克·吐温）在密苏里州佛罗里达州出生时，哈雷彗星再次出现在天空中。到1909年，74年过去了，吐温预测，他自己的死——就像他的出生一样——将与彗星的出现相吻合。报道援引他的话说：“如果我不和哈雷彗星一起出去，那将是我一生中最大的失望。全能者无疑说过：‘现在这两个不负责任的怪胎来了；他们一起进来了，必须一起出去’。”
As it happened, Twain died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910 - the day after Halley’s Comet emerged from the far side of the Sun. The comet’s appearance proved particularly spectacular that year for other reasons as well: It passed only about 13.9 million miles (22.4 million km) from Earth, or about 1/15 the distance between Earth and the Sun; and for the first time, the comet’s passage was captured on camera. Halley’s Comet appeared most recently in 1986 and is scheduled to enter our skies again in 2061.
事实上，吐温于1910年4月21日死于心脏病发作，也就是哈雷彗星从太阳的另一边出现的第二天。那年，这颗彗星的出现被证明特别壮观，还有其他原因：它距离地球仅1390万英里（2240万公里），约为地球和太阳距离的1/15；第一次，彗星的经过地球被摄像机捕捉到。哈雷彗星最近一次出现在1986年，并将于2061年再次进入我们的天空。
6. 'Miss Unsinkable' Violet Jessop was on board three gigantic sister ships (Titanic, Olympic and Britannic) when disaster struck them—and lived to tell the tale.
灾难发生时，“永不沉没的女士”维奥莱特·杰索普正在三艘巨大的姊妹船（泰坦尼克号、奥林匹克号和不列颠号）上，她活着讲述了这个故事。
Born in Argentina to Irish immigrants, Jessop left convent school back in Britain after her mother, a stewardess on the Royal Mail Line, became ill. To provide for her family, the 21-year-old became a ship stewardess as well, working on the Royal Mail Line before moving on to the White Star Line. Locked in competition with Cunard for the transatlantic passenger market, White Star launched its trio of gigantic luxury liners, the Olympic, the Titanic and the Britannic, in 1911. Jessop was serving aboard the Olympic that September, during its fifth commercial voyage, when the liner collided with the HMS Hawke near the Isle of Wight, in southern England. (It was later determined that suction from the Olympic had pulled the Hawke directly into the ocean liner.) Jessop then made the move to the Titanic in time for the “unsinkable” ship’s maiden voyage in April 1912, when it sailed out of Southampton en route to New York City. She later wrote in her memoirs of the unforgettable night of April 14-15, when the ship hit an iceberg and sank, taking some 1,500 people along with it. Jessop helped other women and children into lifeboats before climbing into one herself; one of the ship’s officers placed a bundled-up baby on her lap. After eight hours on the lifeboat, a ship called the Carpathia rescued Jessop and the others, and a frantic woman (whom Jessop assumed was the baby’s mother) snatched the infant from her arms.
杰索普出生于阿根廷，父母是爱尔兰移民。在母亲生病后，她离开了修道院学校，回到了英国。为了养家糊口，21岁的杰索普也成为了一名船上的服务员，在皇家邮政邮轮公司工作，然后转到白星邮轮公司。在与库纳德争夺跨大西洋客运市场的竞争中，白星邮轮公司于1911年推出了三艘巨型豪华邮轮，即奥林匹克号、泰坦尼克号和不列颠号。那年9月，杰索普在奥林匹克号的第五次商业航行中工作，该邮轮与英国皇家海军霍克号在英格兰南部的怀特岛附近相撞。（后来确定，奥运匹克号的吸力将霍克号直接拉进了这艘远洋客轮。）1912年4月，当这艘“永不沉没”的船驶出南安普顿前往纽约市时，杰索普及时登上了泰坦尼克号。后来，她在回忆录中写道，4月14日至15日是一个难忘的夜晚，船撞上冰山沉没，船上约有1500人。杰索普帮助其他妇女和儿童登上救生艇，然后自己爬上救生艇；船上的一名军官把一个裹着的婴儿放在她的腿上。在救生艇上呆了八个小时后，一艘名为喀尔巴阡号的船救出了杰索普和其他人，一名疯狂的妇女（杰索普以为她是婴儿的母亲）从她的怀里抢走了婴儿。The third White Star ship, the Britannic, was requisitioned as a hospital ship after World War I broke out. Remarkably, Jessop - by then a nurse in the British Red Cross - was serving aboard the Britannic in November 1916, when the ship struck a mine planted by a German U-boat in the Aegean Sea. Though the explosion caused extensive damage, and the Britannic sank less than an hour later, only 30 people died. More than 1,000 others were saved—including “Miss Unsinkable” herself. Jessop continued working on cruise ships after the war, eventually compiling a 42-year career at sea before her retirement. She died in 1971.
第一次世界大战爆发后，第三艘白星邮轮“不列颠”号被征用为医用船。值得注意的是，1916年11月，时任英国红十字会护士的杰索普在不列颠号上工作时，该船在爱琴海撞上了一艘德国U型潜艇埋设的水雷。尽管爆炸造成了巨大的破坏，不列颠号在不到一小时后沉没，但只有30人死亡。另外1000多人获救，其中包括“永不沉没的女士”本人。杰索普在战后继续在邮轮上工作，最终在退役前完成了42年的海上生涯。她于1971年去世。
【Source】www.history.com
【Translated by】Spark Liao (廖怀宝)
【Illustration】From Bing
