coincindences. i like em. got any other good ones?
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Coincidence is the noteworthy alignment of two or more events or circumstances without obvious causal connection. The word is derived from the Latin co- ("in", "with", "together") and incidere ("to fall on").
The index of coincidence can be used to analyze whether two events are related. A coincidence does not prove a relationship, but related events may be expected to have a higher index of coincidence. From a statistical perspective, coincidences are inevitable and often less remarkable than they may appear intuitively. The odds that two people share a birthday, for example, reaches 50% with a group of just 22[1] (see the Birthday paradox).Comment
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In The Psychology of the Psychic the author David Marks describes four distinct meanings of the term "coincidence". Marks suggests that coincidences occur because of "odd matches" when two events A and B are perceived to contain a similarity of some kind. For example, dreaming of a plane crash (event A) would be matched by seeing a news report of a plane crash on the next morning (event B).Comment
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In optics, coincidence is also used to refer to two or more incident beams of light that strike the same point at the same time.
Remarkable coincidences sometimes lead to claims of psychic phenomena or conspiracy theories. Some researchers (see Charles Fort and Carl Jung) have compiled thousands of accounts of coincidences and other supposedly anomalous phenomena (see synchronicity). The perception of coincidences often leads to occult or paranormal claims. It may also lead to a belief in fatalism, that events are pre-destined to happen in the exact manner of a prior plan or formula. This lends certain events an aura of inevitability.Comment
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Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely. The word derives from an old Persian fairy tale and was coined by Horace Walpole on 28 January 1754 in a letter he wrote to his friend Horace Mann (not the same man as the famed American educator), an Englishman then living in Florence. The letter read....Comment
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"It was once when I read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right—now do you understand serendipity? One of the most remarkable instances of this accidental sagacity (for you must observe that no discovery of a thing you are looking for, comes under this description) was of my Lord Shaftsbury, who happening to dine at Lord Chancellor Clarendon's, found out the marriage of the Duke of York and Mrs. Hyde, by the respect with which her mother treated her at table."[1]Comment
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Rayon, the first synthetic silk was discovered by French chemist Hilaire de Chardonnet, an assistant to Louis Pasteur. He spilled a bottle of collodion and found later that he could draw thin strands from the evaporated viscous liquid.Comment
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Corn flakes and wheat flakes (Wheaties) were accidentally discovered by the Kellogs brothers in 1898, when they left cooked wheat untended for a day and tried to roll the mass, obtaining a flaky material instead of a sheet.Comment
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Archimedes' prototypical cry of Eureka when he made an analogy of specific gravity with his body displacing water in the bathtubComment
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The libido-enhancing effect of l-dopa, a drug used for treating Parkinson's disease. Older patients in a sanatorium had their long-lost interest in sex suddenly revived.Comment
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