Incredibly pat historical occurrences

[Tom Colton]

To wit, the sort of thing that, if written in a fictional timeline, would have people complaining that it'd be a bit too on-the-nose.

I'm sure there's plenty of them out there, but one that comes to mind is the first music video played on MTV literally being "Video Killed the Radio Star".



Feel free to mention other such occurrences you know about!

 

[Meadow]

To wit, the sort of thing that, if written in a fictional timeline, would have people complaining that it'd be a bit too on-the-nose.

I'm sure there's plenty of them out there, but one that comes to mind is the first music video played on MTV literally being "Video Killed the Radio Star".

I think that was the joke, but yes.

 

[Thande]

I think that was the joke, but yes.

I don't think he thought it was a coincidence, they did it on purpose, but that it just feels almost too pat that they decided to do so.

 

[Coiler]

That both Kennedy and Lincoln were succeeded by vice presidents named Johnson.

 

[Thande]

That both Kennedy and Lincoln were succeeded by vice presidents named Johnson.

Comparing the Johnsons was a big thing in the seventies (not like that). I mentioned once that I had seen a rundown in a book from that era about the similarities between Kennedy and Lincoln (e.g. one's assassin shot him in a theatre then hid in a book depository, the other shot him from a book depository and then hid in a theatre) and someone else said that they had seen much the same rundown in a different book around the same time.

 

[The Lone Centurion]

Fiction has to be plausible and real life doesn't?

 

[Tovarich]

I don't think he thought it was a coincidence, they did it on purpose, but that it just feels almost too pat that they decided to do so.

The inverse (sort of) was MTV Europe launching with Dire Straits' Money For Nothing, and a lot of people think having Sting want his MTV as the intro to that was done purely at behest of the channel.
It wasn't.

 

[Jared]

Comparing the Johnsons was a big thing in the seventies (not like that). I mentioned once that I had seen a rundown in a book from that era about the similarities between Kennedy and Lincoln (e.g. one's assassin shot him in a theatre then hid in a book depository, the other shot him from a book depository and then hid in a theatre) and someone else said that they had seen much the same rundown in a different book around the same time.

Once again, OTL's author lacks imagination and keeps recycling previous series.

 

[Md139115]

Snopes had to publish a whole article debunking the Kennedy-Lincoln correlations. It makes for darn good reading.

 

[Indicus]

An immensely old-fashioned British PM being named “Churchill”, or “Church on a Hill”, seeing one of the British Empire’s greatest acts of heroism (the Second World War) and one of its greatest acts of evil (the 1943 Bengal famine), symbolizing both the good and bad of the British Empire.

 

[frustrated progressive]

"Floridian corruption via drug money is just a trope"
In 1984, the entire Key West Police Department was declared a criminal organization for operating a drug smuggling protection ring.

 

[Death's Companion]

Once again, OTL's author lacks imagination and keeps recycling previous series.

I'm just glad that they finally started diversifying and having prophets and saviours who weren't all Jewish men.

An immensely old-fashioned British PM being named “Churchill”, or “Church on a Hill”, seeing one of the British Empire’s greatest acts of heroism (the Second World War) and one of its greatest acts of evil (the 1943 Bengal famine), symbolizing both the good and bad of the British Empire.

The dominion that contributed the highest share of its population to fighting Nazism was Rhodesia which famously declared independence and fought a war of racial supremacy for its entire existence.

 

[Ncw8]

Robert Todd Lincoln looks like one of those characters in a historical mini-series who always happens to be around when a famous historical event occurs. He was staying in the White House when his father was assassinated and rushed to be with his parents after the shooting. He was an eye-witness to the assassination of President Garfield and was at the Pan-American Exposition when McKinley was shot. After that he refused any further invitations from Presidents.

Earlier, he had been saved from serious injury or death at a train station by the brother of John Wilkes Booth.

 

[frustrated progressive]

Robert Todd Lincoln looks like one of those characters in a historical mini-series who always happens to be around when a famous historical event occurs. He was staying in the White House when his father was assassinated and rushed to be with his parents after the shooting. He was an eye-witness to the assassination of President Garfield and was at the Pan-American Exposition when McKinley was shot. After that he refused any further invitations from Presidents.

Earlier, he had been saved from serious injury or death at a train station by the brother of John Wilkes Booth.

Edwin Booth is the ideal denizen of this thread in and of himself. A staunch Unionist and Lincoln-voter, who, after the war received death threats in lieu of the guilty party.

 

[Resurgam]

The world's largest ocean liner strikes an iceberg on its maiden voyage with a cross section of society on board, sinking slowly enough to enable survivors and drama to play out but fast enough to highlight the failings of technology and the complacency of a world hurtling towards the abyss.

 

[frustrated progressive]

The world's largest ocean liner strikes an iceberg on its maiden voyage with a cross section of society on board, sinking slowly enough to enable survivors and drama to play out but fast enough to highlight the failings of technology and the complacency of a world hurtling towards the abyss.

The melodrama is largely the conceit of our own narrative storytelling about it, creating the story in a never ending orgasmic circle of low morality and Leonardo DiCaprio.

 

[Resurgam]

The melodrama is largely the conceit of our own narrative storytelling about it, creating the story in a never ending orgasmic circle of low morality and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Ugh, no, modern society and James Cameron have nothing to do with it. I REALLY wish people would stop bringing that goddamned movie into it.

It was Walter Lord. Thanks to two world wars and the growing threat of nuclear annihilation few if any remembered the Titanic. His A Night to Remember rescued the disaster from obscurity. It also gave it the window dressing of being some kind of symbol for the end of an age which is largely nonsensical in the context of what's coming in 1914. Without it the Titanic probably would have ended up like the Wilhelm Gustoff.

 

[Japhy]

Ugh, no, modern society and James Cameron have nothing to do with it. I REALLY wish people would stop bringing that goddamned movie into it.

It was Walter Lord. Thanks to two world wars and the growing threat of nuclear annihilation few if any remembered the Titanic. His A Night to Remember rescued the disaster from obscurity. It also gave it the window dressing of being some kind of symbol for the end of an age which is largely nonsensical in the context of what's coming in 1914. Without it the Titanic probably would have ended up like the Wilhelm Gustoff.

Dude the Nazis made a titanic movie. It was never getting lost in the shuffle of the 20th Century

 

[Resurgam]

Dude the Nazis made a titanic movie. It was never getting lost in the shuffle of the 20th Century

They did, but I'd imagine that was more out of propaganda than any meaningful staying power of the story.

 

[Japhy]

They did, but I'd imagine that was more out of propaganda than any meaningful staying power of the story.

It just seems rather ridiculous looking at the record of it to say it was ever fading out at any point. Or for that matter to underestimate the obnoxious power of Cameron over the past two decades.