Roger Bannister was the first person to break the four-minute mile, running it in three minutes 59.4 seconds on 6 May 1954. But what’s just as fascinating as the feat itself is what happened next. For years, the four-minute mile was seen as an unbreakable barrier – some even believed it was physically impossible. Yet, just 46 days later, Australia’s John Landy ran a mile in 3:57.9, breaking Bannister’s record. Within a year multiple runners including Eric Thomson in South Africa, had done the same.

It was believed that Bannister’s achievement didn’t just break a record – it shattered a mental block. Once he proved it could be done, others followed quickly. It’s a powerful example of how changing belief can change performance. What once seemed impossible became a new standard. But how Thomson also came to break the longstanding record, not knowing it had already been broken by Bannister and Landy, remained a mystery.

In the 1960s, while studying twins living in different countries, Dr Michael Ratzinger discovered that sometimes they experienced unusual events simultaneously. A single stand-alone grey whisker grew out of the cheek of a brother in Germany at the same time one grew in the same spot of his twin in Melbourne, Australia. An arm was broken in Canada at the same moment an arm was broken in France. A twin brother and sister died of heart attacks at the exact same time in Argentina and Singapore.

Elsewhere, twin boys separated at birth, both named Jim, both became cops, both married women named Linda, both had sons named James, both divorced and married women named Betty, and both had dogs named Troy.

In Bermuda in 1975, a man was walking down the street when he was hit by a taxi and killed. Exactly one year later, ...