Chicago. A man is about to get on a routine flight. Suddenly he pauses and decides to walk away. He doesn't know why. An hour later the plane goes down in flames. It's dismissed as chance … Britain. A woman has an image of a black mountain that's moving, with children underneath it. Two hours later, a Welsh schoolhouse is buried in an avalanche of coal slag. It's dismissed as coincidence.1 New York. A book designer named Chip Kidd begins to read his New York Times. On the cover is a photo of new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a suspected puppet of former president Vladimir Putin. The photo has been torn across Medvedev's midsection to reveal a word: Trickery. It's dismissed as something that could only happen to a famous book designer who has been known to use this sort of graphic element. But really, was it all in his mind, or was it much more than that? You decide.
1 If you were a TV-watcher in the 80's, you probably saw a commercial for the Time-Life books commercial for a series called Mysteries of the Unknown. This was my favorite: "The Midwest. A mother feels a sharp pain in her right hand. Far away at that exact same moment, her daughter screams as she touches a hot pan. Just chance?" Check it out, for old times sake [YouTube].