Ted McIntyre

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to: Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Fund    alzresearch.org/giving/ Alzheimer’s Foundation of America Caregiver Resources     alzfdn.org/donate/ Photo Credit: Tommy Garcia

Fox: Why are you here this morning? Trump rally attendee: Well, in the late 70s, I was a little too young to go to South America for the Jonestown Massacre. But this is as close as I'll ever get, so that's why I'm here. There's nothing like seeing a cult right up front.

In 1838, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about four men stranded at sea who became so desperate for food that they decided one of them had to die. He gave the unfortunate victim a name. Richard Parker. Forty-six years later, something happened in the Atlantic Ocean that bore an almost unbelievable resemblance to Poe's fictional story. On July 5, 1884, a British yacht called the Mignonette was sailing toward Australia when a massive wave struck the vessel roughly 1,600 miles from the Cape of Good Hope. The yacht sank within minutes, leaving its four crew members adrift in a small open lifeboat. They had almost nothing to eat or drink. Captain Thomas Dudley, first mate Edwin Stephens, sailor Edmund Brooks, and 17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker survived on two small tins of turnips, a turtle they managed to catch, and whatever rainwater they could collect. After nearly three weeks at sea, their supplies were gone. Parker had become seriously ill after drinking seawater and was lying helpless in the boat. The men began discussing whether one of them should be sacrificed so the others could survive. Brooks refused to participate, but Dudley and Stephens eventually decided to kill Parker. On July 25, they took the boy's life and used his body for food. Four days later, a passing German vessel rescued the three surviving men. When they returned to England, Dudley and Stephens were charged with murder. Their case became one of the most famous legal decisions in British history, establishing that necessity was not a defense for killing an innocent person simply to survive. Both men were sentenced to death, although their sentences were later commuted to six months in prison. The similarities to Poe's novel were so striking that a Dublin newspaper discussed them in December 1884, while the murder case was still attracting attention. Poe had been dead for 35 years, and there's no evidence of any connection between his fictional character and the real Richard Parker. Yet somehow, 46 years before a 17-year-old boy lost his life at sea, Edgar Allan Poe had written almost the same tragedy and given his fictional victim the exact same name. What are the odds of that?