QUOTE(Got Milk? @ Nov 24 2005, 09:38 AM)
Surely you don't need a history teacher to explain this... its simple..
1. Conspiracy.
2. Coincidence.
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Actually you are right about the Coincidence part Like the election thing.
Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.
This statement is literally true: both Lincoln and Kennedy were first elected to Congress one hundred years apart. Aside from that minor coincidence, however, their political careers bore little resemblance to each other.
Lincoln was an Illinois state legislator who, outside of his election to a single term in the House of Representatives, failed in his every attempt to gain national political office until he was elected President in 1860, including an unsuccessful bid for the Senate in 1854, a unsuccessful bid to become the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 1856, and another unsuccessful bid for a Senate seat in 1858.
Kennedy, on the other hand, enjoyed an unbroken string of political successes at the national level when he entered the political arena after World War II. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946, re-elected in 1948, re-elected again in 1950, won a Senate seat in 1952, was re-elected to the Senate in 1958, and was elected President in 196
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.
It's hardly surprising that two men who (as noted above) both achieved their first political successes at the national level a hundred years apart would also ascend to the Presidency a hundred years apart. This "coincidence" is even less surprising when we consider that presidential elections are held only once every four years. Lincoln couldn't possibly have been elected President in 1857 or 1858 or 1859 or 1861 or 1862 or 1863, because no presidential elections were held in those years. Likewise, Kennedy couldn't possibly have been elected President in the non-election years of 1957, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962, or 1963. So, even though both men were politically active at the national level during eight-year spans when they might have been elected President, circumstances dictated that the only years during those spans when they both could have been elected were exactly one hundred years apart.
Also unmentioned here is the fact that Lincoln was re-elected to a second term as President, but Kennedy was killed before the completion of his first term.
The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.
Surely this is the most trivial of coincidences, especially considering that the two men's first names contain different numbers of letters, and that Kennedy had a middle name (Fitzgerald) while Lincoln had none.
We're supposed to be amazed at minor happenstances such as the two men's being elected exactly one hundred years apart or having the same number of letters in their last names, but we're supposed to think nothing of the numerous non-coincidences: Lincoln was born in 1809; Kennedy was born in 1917. Lincoln died in 1865; Kennedy died in 1963. Lincoln was 56 years old at the time of his death; Kennedy was 46 years old at the time of his death. No striking coincidences or convenient hundred-year differences in any of those facts. Even when we consider that, absent all other factors, the two men had a one in twelve chance of dying in the same month, we find no coincidence there: Lincoln was killed in April; Kennedy was killed in November.
