Interesting

So here's a strange story.

Have you read about the little boy whose parents are convinced he was a pilot during WWII? It's been in the news quite a bit lately, although the story has been going on for the past few years. Here's a link to one article about it.

A few nights ago, my parents were over for dinner and my father brought up the story. I told him that my younger son had told me some strange things when he was about a year and a half old. The first one, when he was just learning to talk, was: "I used to be an old man. Then I died. Then I was a baby again."

Shortly after that, we were driving in the car one day, and he suddenly pulled the pacifier out of his mouth and said: "There was a big earthquake. In 1953. A lot of people died." Then he put the pacifier back in his mouth. This was completely inexplicable, since we hadn't been discussing earthquakes, and as far as I know, he had never heard of an earthquake and certainly didn't know about dates yet.

My father, who is 81, said he didn't remember any earthquake in 1953 and asked whether I had ever researched it. I told him I hadn't, and didn't think about it again. This morning he called me and said, "Hey, you know that earthquake we were talking about? It happened. On August 12, 1953, a massive earthquake hit the Greek islands and killed hundreds of people. I'm looking at the pictures of it right now." So naturally I got online and looked it up myself. And indeed, it's true. A series of several large earthquakes struck the Greek islands between August 9 and August 12, 1953. The largest, on August 12, had a magnitude of 7.2, and several hundred people were killed, hundreds more injured, and thousands of buildings were completely destroyed. Ships from Israel (it was Israel's first aid mission) and Great Britain raced to the rescue, and several other countries sent aid, including the US, Norway, and Sweden.

My son is now nine years old and has no memory of an earthquake or of telling me about it. Anyone else have any strange stories to share?