Last year, Covington Catholic High School hit the American media like a bomb because of a video that the media claimed showed a smug, MAGA-hat wearing, anti-abortion boy smirking at a noble Native American. In fact, the video actually showed a polite, pro-Life, pro-Trump, 16-year-old boy smiling nervously as an aggressive activist invaded his space, drumming away at him. CNN has already caved to the truth and paid Nick Sandmann, that nice boy, a sum reputed to be around $25 million for slandering him. Other media outlets are expected to pay up too.

This year, thankfully, we are not seeing a rehash of the media pile-on against young people who oppose abortion. Covington Catholic, however, did again charter some buses to take its students from Park Hills, Kentucky, to the March for Life. As far as we can tell, all went well in D.C.

On the trip home, though, one of the three buses carrying the students was hit by a driver traveling south on a northbound stretch of road. Thankfully, no one on the bus died, although the bus driver had to be taken to the hospital, one student had a bloody nose, and a couple of chaperones got banged up. The driver of the wrong-way car was killed, however.

Because there were priests traveling with the students, one of the priests was able to administer last rites to the person killed. There is no news yet as to why that person was driving in the wrong direction on the freeway, although rainy weather may have contributed to the driver’s confusion.

We note this small tragedy simply because it’s interesting to see how a person or an entity, once engaged with history, keeps showing up again. We saw this as well with Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos. If those names sound familiar, it’s because Stone and Skarlatos were two of three young Americans who helped stop a terrorist attack on a train traveling to Paris in August 2015.

A heavily-armed Moroccan national had tangled with and shot a man who was badly injured. (The Frenchman, Mark Moogalian, was so terrified of Islamic reprisal within France that he initially refused to be identified, despite his own heroism in trying to stop the attack.)

Hearing the gunshots, Stone, Skarlatos, and their childhood friend Anthony Sadler, instantly swung into action, taking on the terrorist as other passengers hid. Stone was stabbed several times in the neck and almost lost his thumb.

That would be a single story . . . except for the fact that both Stone and Skarlatos showed up in the news again, with both stories occurring in October 2015, roughly two months after the train attack. Stone appeared in another heroic role. He was out for the evening at a bar in Sacramento when he saw James Tran, an ex-con, harassing a woman. Stone stepped in to help. Eventually, Tran repeatedly stabbed Stone in the back. Stone required open-heart surgery to repair wounds to his lungs, liver, and heart.

At roughly the same time, although Alek Skarlatos did not figure directly in the story, Skarlatos's name still came up when a gunman killed nine people at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Skarlatos had been a student at Umpqua Community College before he was deployed to Afghanistan in 2014, which instantly tied him to the tragedy.

The human mind is hardwired to notice coincidences, which is a way to help us make sense of an otherwise chaotic world. However, even that kind of hardwiring should not account for a single high school having newsworthy events twice occur in connection with the March for Life or for two young men who stopped a terrorist in August 2015 to be connected with violence (through no fault of their own) once against in October 2015.

Some people and institutions seem destined for fame whether they want it or not.