History is irony on the move, as Emil Cioran reminds us. It is also a flood of coincidences, overlaps, omens. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams dying just hours apart on the fiftieth anniversary of American independence; the brother of Lincoln’s assassin saving the life of Lincoln’s eldest son a year before the attack in the theater; the license plate on the car of Archduke Franz Ferdinand having the numerals for Armistice Day, the end of World War I; Hitler shadowing Napoleon in birth, ascent to power, invasion of Russia, and defeat by 129 years all the way through.
