The PR Blog

It’s been a year since what many still call a Divine Intervention unfolded before our eyes... an event that left us stunned, reflective, and, for some, humbled. As Donald Trump turned his head to glance at a graph on a screen, a bullet tore past him, grazing his ear. A fraction of a second either side, a fraction of an inch, and we would be telling a different story. Instead, the world saw a man brush death by the narrowest of margins: saved, perhaps, by nothing more than a glance. Or by something greater.

A miracle, some said. A coincidence, others argued. But either way, it was a moment that stopped the world. And it made me pause and think: how often do these moments really happen? What do we call them when they’re small and private, when there are no cameras, no headlines, no Secret Service scrambling?

Divine intervention is the belief that a higher power steps in - sometimes grandly, sometimes subtly - to shape human events. It can look like a miracle, or like blind luck. Sometimes, it looks like a well-timed glance. Sometimes, like a stranger holding a door a second too long. And let’s be honest - how many of us have muttered, “Hell, that was lucky,” and moved on?

Now, I am about to recount a story that on face value is utterly absurd: why the hell am I reading about Shaydee's laundry woes you may ask? But it will make sense.

My dryer is wall-mounted and space is tight - half an inch clearance, if that. I needed a new washing machine. Only one top-loading model even came close. It was a gamble. I called Redhead and asked her to put in a word with my late father, just in case he could put in a quiet cosmic nudge. And what do you know? Lid up, it worked - with a third of an inch to spare. Thanks Dad!

That’s not world-shaking, but it’s the kind of moment that makes you wonder. That small measurement made all the difference. Just like Trump in some ways. 

There have been bigger ones. Moments where a single decision, made on impulse, may have saved my life. Moments that left me saying, “If I hadn’t done that, just that, I wouldn’t be here.”

Some people pray, and nothing happens. Others never pray, and yet get answers anyway. Some call it coincidence. But coincidences sometimes carry too much weight, too much precision, to be written off so easily.

Take Morgan Robertson’s novella, Futility (1898), about the unsinkable ship Titan. Fourteen years later, the Titanic sank...an unsinkable ship hitting an iceberg, lifeboats insufficient. The fictional and the real blurred into something chilling.

Or the eerie parallels between Lincoln and Kennedy:

• Lincoln elected to Congress in 1846, Kennedy in 1946.

• Lincoln elected President in 1860, Kennedy in 1960.

• Both succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.

• Both assassinated on a Friday, in the presence of their wives.

• Lincoln shot in Ford’s Theatre. Kennedy shot in a Lincoln, made by Ford.

Or the tale of Edgar Allan Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym, which described a shipwrecked crew drawing lots - and the one sacrificed was named Richard Parker. In real life, in 1884, after a similar shipwreck, a boy named Richard Parker met the same fate.

These are not isolated stories. 

Mark Twain was born in 1835, the year Halley’s Comet made one of its regular 75-76 year appearances. Twain himself predicted that he would die with the comet’s return, saying, "I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it." Twain died on April 21, 1910, the day after the comet’s closest approach to Earth.

The first person to die during the construction of the Hoover Dam was J.G. Tierney, a surveyor who drowned in the Colorado River on December 20, 1922. The last fatality was Patrick Tierney, his son, who also drowned in the river exactly 13 years later, on December 20, 1935.

In 1883, Henry Ziegland broke off a relationship with his girlfriend, who then took her own life. Her brother, seeking revenge, shot Ziegland. Believing he had killed him, the brother took his own life. However, Ziegland had not been killed; the bullet had only grazed him and lodged in a tree. Years later, Ziegland decided to remove the tree and used dynamite to blow it up. The explosion propelled the bullet into Ziegland's head, killing him.

In 2002, two 70-year-old twin brothers died on the same day in separate but eerily similar accidents in Finland. Both men were struck and killed by trucks while riding their bicycles within two hours of each other on the same road, about a mile apart.

Three men were struck by lightning during different years in the same place in Taranto, Italy. All three survived, and each one was named Giovanni. The hotel where they were staying was also named the "Giovanni Hotel."

These stories, while sometimes hard to believe, highlight the mysterious and often surprising nature of coincidences in our world.

But one is rather peculiar and really does give rise to that feeling that something else is going on. 

Anthony Hopkins, renowned for his mesmerising performances on screen, is not the name that typically comes to mind when discussing quantum mechanics. However, an intriguing tale involving the legendary actor has sparked interest in the interplay between coincidence and quantum theory, a field that fundamentally challenges our understanding of reality.

The story begins in the early 1970s, a pivotal moment in Hopkins' career. He had been cast as the lead in a film adaptation of George Feifer's novel, "The Girl from Petrovka." Eager to immerse himself in the role, Hopkins sought out a copy of the book in various bookstores across London, but to no avail. Just when his search seemed fruitless, he chanced upon a forgotten copy left on a bench at a train station. To his astonishment, it was annotated by the author himself.

This coincidence grew even more uncanny months later when Hopkins met George Feifer. In their conversation, Feifer lamented the loss of his own annotated copy of the book in London. When Hopkins showed him the copy he had found, Feifer confirmed it was the very same one he had misplaced. This astonishing series of events exemplifies the phenomena often described in discussions of synchronicity and the interconnectedness of events.

I am a greater fan of the writings of the late great Douglas Adams who wrote about this sort of thing in his Dirk Gently Holistic Detective Agency novels. 

I was once, about 20 years ago, in Brisbane, trying to get to a venue that I absolutely had to be at on time. I had only recently read The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and was hopelessly lost. I had no GPS because it was not au rigour in those days. At that stage, all I wanted to do was get back home and call it a day. Douglas Adams had advised that I follow someone. I may not end up where I intended to be but where I needed to be.  There was a car in front of me, a 4 wheel drive. We were both headed down a one way street in a back alley of South Brisbane looking for a short cut I would never find. " Oh bugger it! " I thought. I followed the 4 wheeler through back streets and lane ways, and within 10 minutes came to a carpark. The 4 wheeler turned left and I lost it. I looked up at where I was: it was my venue.

True story.  

And maybe that’s why the washing machine story matters.

At the time, it felt almost silly. fretting over half an inch, asking the universe for a nudge. But that sliver of space made all the difference.

Just like Trump’s quarter-second glance. Just like a stray bullet and a turned head. Maybe, in the grand design. or the tangled mess of life, the details we dismiss are the ones that save us. Not everything has to make sense. But sometimes, when the lid lifts and just clears the dryer, you can't help but whisper: thank God for that quarter of an inch.

At the moment, Trump is making decisions that many find puzzling: some bold, some baffling. Only time will tell whether they were the actions of a visionary or the missteps of a man caught in the echo of his own survival. And yet, if we are to believe that fate, destiny, or some higher power played a hand in sparing him, then he is certainly testing our faith in that very idea.

The man we once hailed as a miracle is now asking us to follow him through uncertainty, to trust his path despite our misgivings. Perhaps that is the greater challenge...not believing in miracles, but in what comes after them.