We once made a party game out of that. Randomly selected pairs from the party crowd were given ten minutes and they had to come up with at least as many coincidences as the Lincoln/Kennedy pair. Most of them found even more coincidences and we had a lot of fun. Though I admit that none of us came close to the Monroe, Maryland and Marilyn Monroe coincidence of the presidential pair.

Way back in 1992, the Skeptical Inquirer run a presidential coincidences contest. The task was to find other pairs of presidents with long lists of coincidences. The winner sent in 21 pairs with about as many coincidences each as in the Lincoln/Kennedy pair.

For the fun of it, just some coincidences for one of the pairs:

-William McKinley and James Garfield were both Republicans
-They were both born and raised in Ohio
-Both were Civil war veterans
-Both last names have eight letters
- both of their vice-presidents wore mustaches
- both shot in September in the first year fo their current term....and so on for altogether twelve coincidences for this pair.

Another contestant came up with sixteen coincidences between Kennedy and Mexican president Alvaro Obregon, much more than between Kennedy and Lincoln. Now what does that mean?

Wolfgang