We think many people have had situations where something has delayed, or on the contrary, rushed them, and because of this, unpleasant things have not happened. There are some greatest survival stories in history. For example, a person would slip and fall on the ice, and then a brick would fall one meter in front of him. If he had not slipped, the brick would have killed him. It’s at moments like that that you start to believe in fate.
Sometimes these cases are so unusual that you do not believe in their reality because they seem like a fairy tale. Here are a few strange cases that helped people survive.
A broken train helped the Emperor avoid being hit by terrorists
Emperor Alexander II, who ruled the Russian Empire from 1855 to 1881, survived many attempts on his life. On September 7, 1879, the People’s Will organization decided to assassinate the Emperor and planned the attack for December 1.
Having learned that the Emperor would be returning with his entourage from the Crimea by rail, they decided to blow up the wagon with the ruler. They knew that usually, the first train went with the entourage and luggage, and the second was the Emperor’s, with an interval of 30 minutes.
Knowing this, they planted a bomb so that it would go off under the second train and kill the Emperor. But on that day, when Alexander II was to leave Kharkiv, the locomotive of the suite train, which was to go first, was out of order. The Emperor, not wishing to wait for the completion of repairs, rode his train first, and later the repaired train with his entourage and luggage left after him. The Emperor’s train passed by the terrorists without incident, and the terrorists, not knowing that the train with the entourage was following, blew up the second train.
By the way, later, the People’s Will again tried to eliminate Alexander II with a bomb. One of the Narodnaya Volya took a job as a carpenter in the Winter Palace and planted a bomb in the basement, where he lived. The power of the explosion should have been enough to kill the Emperor, who usually had lunch in the dining room on the second floor.
However, because of the lateness of the Prince of Hesse, brother of Empress Maria Alexandrovna, with whom the Emperor was supposed to have lunch, Alexander II was far from the dining room and again escaped death.
The decision to take a longer walk broke the serial killer’s plans
It was April 28, 1979, when 63-year-old Anna Williams met her friends and went for a walk. Usually, she would stay overnight at her friends’ houses and return home around 10 a.m. But not this time. Deciding to stay late, she didn’t return until about 1 a.m. the next morning.
What she didn’t know was that she had been stalked for months by serial killer Dennis Lynn Rader, who had already victimized 10 people. But without waiting for the woman at her house on the day he planned his next murder, Rader left.
An alcoholic party saved a plane crash
On December 21, 1988, New Yorker Jaswant Basuta wanted to return home after a holiday he was celebrating in England. But he missed his flight, and when he arrived at the airport, he saw the doors leading to the plane closing in his face. The man tried to get on board but was delayed and prevented from doing so because boarding was already complete.
This situation on any other day would have been unpleasant because the man lost time and money, but not this time. The Boeing 747 on which Basuta was to have flown exploded in midair over the village of Lockerbie, Scotland. It turned out that a bomb had been placed on the plane, killing all 270 people on board.
Conversation saved the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from a bomb blast
Abdul-Hamid II, the last autocratic ruler of the Ottoman Empire, was to become a victim of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in Istanbul. Abdul-Hamid came to pray at the Yildiz Mosque every Friday and left at the same time. Knowing this fact, the revolutionaries bet on the accuracy of the Sultan’s schedule. They left a bomb in a carriage not far from the mosque and set a timer for 42 seconds. At the time the bomb went off, Abdul-Hamid was supposed to pass right there, and he would have had no chance of surviving.
However, this time, Abdul-Hamid lingered at the mosque to talk to Shaykh al-Islam, which kept him alive.
The crash helped avoid a terrorist attack
On September 11, 2001, Lara Lundstrum Clark was rushing the subway to get to work when she was nearly hit by a car in a crosswalk. There she engaged in a polite game with the driver, who turned out to be actress Gwyneth Paltrow, the condition for winning which, apparently, was to make herself look guilty. After a series of apologies, they went their separate ways. Clark was late, but, as it turned out, not for nothing, because on that day, the building where her office was located, namely one of the twin towers, was attacked by terrorists.
Avoid being killed by a gas explosion
This story makes one wonder about the existence of a higher power. On March 1, 1950, at 7:27 a.m., the Westside Baptist Church in Nebraska exploded due to a gas leak. None of the members of the choir that was scheduled to perform at the church at 7:20 were hurt because they all arrived late.
The pianist overslept, two choristers wanted to listen to a radio program, the car in which three choristers were supposed to drive didn’t want to start, two choristers were helping a grandmother to dress, and a member of the choir had to finish a letter. And so it was with all the participants.
Willingness to sleep helped avoid death
Raymond Bowling of Austin, Indiana, USA, liked to take a nap after his alarm clock went off. In this, we understand him, because it’s so nice to sleep for at least five more minutes, so you don’t have to get out of a warm bed and go to work. This time, instead of getting up and going to the bathroom for the daily ritual of showering and brushing his teeth, he decided to take a slightly longer nap than usual, just five minutes.
It saved his life because while he was napping, a giant branch broke through the roof and crashed into his bathroom between the toilet and the sink, where Bowling could theoretically have been at that very moment.
