The Lincoln and Kennedy Coincidences

    This strange story is about a series of uncanny coincidences which link two of America's most popular presidents: Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy...

      Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846, Kennedy was elected  100 years later, almost to the day in fact. After their deaths from assassination, both of these presidents were succeeded by Southerners with the surname Johnson. Lincoln was succeeded by Andrew Johnson, who was born in 1808, and Kennedy was succeeded by Lyndon  Johnson, who was born in 1908. Both Johnsons have 13 letters in their names and both of them served in the US Senate.
      Mary Lincoln and Jackie Kennedy both had children who died while their husbands were in the White House.
      Both Lincoln and Kennedy studied law.
      John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald both had fifteen letters in their name, and were both Southerners, were both in their 20s, and of course, both assassins were shot before they could stand trial. Kennedy had a secretary named Miss Lincoln, and Lincoln had a secretary named John Kennedy.
       John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and ran to a warehouse, and Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and ran to a theatre. Stranger still, the car Kennedy was travelling in when he was shot was a Ford Lincoln. Lincoln was shot in Ford's Theatre. 
         Both assassinations took place on a Friday, and the two presidents were shot in the back of the head while their wives were at their side.   Kennedy and Lincoln were both historic civil rights campaigners who were heavily criticised while in 
    office but where glorified after they died. On the day of the assassinations Kennedy and Lincoln made strange prophetic statements.  Hours before Lincoln was shot, he said to his personal guard, "If somebody wants to take my life, there is nothing I can do prevent it."
      And hours before Kennedy went to Dallas in 1963, he said to his wife Jackie, "If somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?"
      And finally, both presidents were said to have been victims of a conspiracy. When Lincoln was shot, the telegraph lines out of Washington D.C. remained silent for three hours on the orders of a high-ranking official who has never been identified. It is thought this information blackout was arranged to give John Wilkes Booth - who was fleeing from the scene of the crime - a head start.

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