30 “One-In-A-Million Coincidences” People Experienced And Were Left Astonished By
Interview With Expert
Whether or not you believe in fate, you can’t deny that luck is certainly a factor in our lives. There are moments when the universe seems to line up perfectly, to serve up some extremely rare coincidences that you’ll likely be talking about even years later. These coincidences can be both good, bad, or (most likely) a mix of both. But it's how we react to these events that truly matters.
The online community on Quora had a lot of fun recounting their “one-in-a-million” coincidences that completely shocked them at the time. We’ve collected some of their most interesting stories to share with you, Pandas. Scroll down to check them out.
Bored Panda wanted to find out how people can come to terms with how many things are outside of their control and based on luck, so we reached out to Max Alberhasky, Ph.D. He is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at California State University Long Beach and the host of the ‘Psychology, Money, and Happiness’ blog on Psychology Today. Alberhasky was kind enough to answer our questions. You'll find our interview with him as you read on.
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This is a picture of an almost 2 year old me and an almost 5 year old little boy who grabbed my hand in line waiting to see Santa, because I was scared (as my mom explained).
I was flipping through photo albums about 20 years later, and thought: gee he looks familar. I was in a relationship with a young man named Chris who looked like he could be that boy, we grew up in the same town. I showed the pic to him and his mom, and sure enough, it was him! 17 more years, and 2 kids later, still going strong!
"It's true, there are some circumstances in life that feel out of our control. Even when we put our best foot forward, sometimes we don't get into our dream college, get the job we interviewed for, or have our lottery ticket number hit. While of course, this can be upsetting in the short term, there is also some good news," Professor Alberhasky told Bored Panda via email.
"Happiness expert Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychologist at UC Riverside, found that when it comes to happiness, around 50% is genetic, 10% is based on life circumstances (i.e., things that happen to us), and 40% comes from how we interpret our thoughts and circumstances," the host of the ‘Psychology, Money, and Happiness’ blog shared.
Not me, my mother. She is Cuban and when she was on her first year of teaching, she was teaching first grade and had a kid that was held back. The teachers called him a bad kid. He found it hard to sit down and pay attention, so he still could not read. My mother made him her “helper” and whenever there was free time she would sit alone with him to go over lessons. He passed first grade and actually did great!
Later on, after the Castro regime took control, my mother left Cuba. She met my father, had children, and moved on with her life.
Years later we were traveling in Florida and a man and his wife came up to her. It was the student! He said he recognized her right away because he never forgot her. He introduced her to his wife as the teacher that did not give up on him.
She is my inspiration!
A good teacher can be so important to have. We don't pay them enough!
I’m a stand-up comedian. A few years into my career (back when I still had a day job) I did a fifteen minute performance at an arts festival. I’d never done as long as fifteen minutes before. It was crowded backstage- singers, dance troupes, etc.- and they just got us when it was our time to go on stage. In front of maybe 30 people, no reaction. I knew my jokes weren’t terrible, but it was like performing for people who didn’t speak English. After maybe 8 or 9 minutes at least a couple of smiles. By the end I’d gotten a few laughs. Went home very unhappy- this was the worst set of my life. You expect to bomb when you’re new but I was a few years in. The next day, during my lunch break, I was in a store. A guy came over and said “You were very funny last night.” I said I was a comedian but clearly I was not funny. He said “Did you know what you followed?” I explained that I had no idea because we were secluded backstage. He said the person before me told the true story about how she was forced into an arranged marriage as a child and was beaten and r*ped every day for years until she managed to escape. He explained that the audience was crying. That it took some time but I cheered them up. There are 8 million people in NYC. There were maybe 30 at the show, and one of them was in the same place as I was, and recognized me, and decided to talk to me.
I know it has a happy ending, but I can't get over that poor woman's story...
"This finding reminds me of an ancient Roman concept called stoicism, which says we do best to work hard on outcomes we have control over and to ignore outcomes which are outside of our control. Of course, this is easier said than done! While it's a fact certain things that impact our lives are simply out of our control and can make us elated or disappointed in the short term, humans are remarkably good at adapting to circumstances and synthesizing happiness."
Alberhasky gave us an example. For instance, we might be upset in the moment when we don't get the job that we wanted. However, a couple of years later, we might hold the opinion that the particular job we once craved might not have been a good fit for us, and that everything happens for a reason.
In the meantime, Bored Panda asked the marketing professor about the main things to focus on in order to lead a happy life, no matter how (un)lucky they might be.
"Time and time again, researchers find that the silver bullet to happiness comes from our social relationships. Our families, romantic partners, children, and friends are the sources that make our lives rich and meaningful," Alberhasky said.
My husband and his first wife went from Chicago to New York for a long weekend. As they waited to cross a busy street, they heard two businessmen behind them discuss how they were going to get the better of someone they were doing a deal with—in St. Louis. Their ears pricked up because his first wife was from St. Louis originally. As they walked along the next street, they were able to hear and identify enough details to realize that these two men were going to trick her uncle by not disclosing certain information. When they got to the hotel, his wife called her uncle—who verified that indeed he was in the middle of doing a deal with these two guys in New York! So no deal happened then! What are the chances?
That's what you'd call fate. Or Karma, or God, but whatever the name, this was meant to happen.
When my wife to be and I started going out together many many years ago, there was a popular song that became our song, and over the years we would close dance to it whenever we heard it. and we always played it on our special occasions.
She recently became seriously ill and was on that path of no return. When she did pass away in hospital in the small hours of the morning, our song played on the radio which we had playing softly in the corner of her room. Incredibly moving.
Incredible coincidence?
I LOVE THIS! When my Mum was passing away, I asked her to let us know when she got to heaven safely. She passed away quite quickly after that and we left the room so the nurses could clean her up and make her look a bit more presentable. When we went back in, the light above her bed started flickering. The nurses said there's never been anything wrong with that light. She got there safely :) :)
I was driving to California from Washington state and I got into an accident in Shaniko, Oregon, which is a tiny ghost town. At that time the population was 17. When I “crash landed” a woman came out to greet me (she hugged the daylights out of me because I was alive). Four guys immediately appeared with tools and instantly removed my tires, taking them to their shop to repair. The car had to be pulled out of the ditch it was in. There was a man they called George who was building a house. He conveniently had a crane! Problem solved. The car was towed to the house of a 15-year-old boy who was currently enrolled in auto-mechanic school. He found the only major issue with my car. A hole in the radiator. That very week in school he had learned to fix those! Problem solved….*almost*. He said that he knew how to fix it, but that he needed a special kind of metal solder to do it. Something he didn't have, but was common with plumbers. But….wait for it….there was a plumber who lived in town. His neighbor, in fact. Problem solved!!
That afternoon I was given a full tour of the town. The kid—that mechanic—wanted me to see the inside of the storage shed filled with vintage cars. He also took me inside the giant barn where the sheep had been sheared for their wool. I got to see the inside of the tiny original jail with two cells and then he took me over to the hotel with the wooden Indian out front. He was quite proud of growing up there and it was an amazing discovery for me. This town fed me, put me up for the night, fixed my car, and never accepted a dime from me. The next day, when I left, was Easter Sunday.
I used to drive an old '71 VW bus with a '71 Toyota truck engine rigged in the back. The only time she ever broke down on me was right in front of an old mechanic's shop who happened to specialize in VW and Toyota. They had never seen anything like my Froggy, but they got her fixed up.
"One exercise I love, recommended in the book 'Happier Hour' by Cassie Mogilner Holmes, asks readers to think of an event such as Christmas with your parents. Although it's easy to take for granted, we may only have 30 Christmases with our parents left in our lifetimes. All of a sudden, we realize our time is limited," the host of the ‘Psychology, Money, and Happiness’ blog shared.
"This exercise helps put special moments with others into perspective, making us more grateful for them. Gratitude is a special ingredient when it comes to being happy and appreciating the special moments and relationships we have. Even if the wind doesn't blow your way with a one-in-a-million opportunity, consider being grateful for the one-in-a-million special relationships in your life."
My wife and I were living in our first house in Oklahoma City. One day while we were both at work, the city sewer department tore down all the fences in the rear of the houses on our block to replace the sewer main. When we got home from work we were heartbroken because we had had our young dog in the backyard and now he was nowhere to be found. We searched the area for days and put up notices but to no avail.
We were starting to believe that we would never see our dog again. My wife was so upset she decided to call the city to “give them a piece of her mind” about the lack of notification on the sewer work causing us to lose our dog.
So she gets a person on the phone from the city's Ombudsman Department. My wife explains the situation and tells the person that we loved that dog and had paid good money for him because he was a registered Irish setter. The person asks where we live and my wife gives our address. The person says “Well that's amazing. I live about a half mile from you and there's been an Irish setter hanging around lately.” My wife tells me the address and when I got to the person's house, there's our dog.
Oklahoma City is a big metropolitan area. Of all the people in the metro area my wife might have got on the phone, our dog happened to be at that person's house.
My wife, then 7 year old son and myself were on vacation in Hilton Head, and decided to go out to dinner one night. The dinner table was covered in white paper and the waitress brought out a set of crayons for my son, telling him he could use the whole table as “his canvas”. My son had brought some toy cars and proceeded to draw out an elaborate set of roads and played happily around the table. An elderly gentleman approached our table and asked if it was OK to give our son a little car. He pulled a Hot Wheels from his inside pocket. We said it was OK and he offered our son the car, which he happily accepted and added to the table/race-track. I asked him why he randomly had toy cars in his pocket and he told me he was retired but now worked with a Hilton Head classic car organization as a hobby, and in that function always carried a few cars with him. The gentleman then asked if we were Dutch, to which I replied that I am. He had overheard me speak Dutch with our son, and he said he recognized the language as he had worked for KLM Cargo in their US division for many years. I told him that was a huge coincidence as my grandfather for years was President of KLM’s cargo division. He asked for my family name, and then with great surprise told me that my grandfather had been his boss throughout his career at KLM! He was now retired (and my grandfather had died many decades ago) but he remembered my grandfather, and his trips to the Dutch KLM headquarters fondly. The chances for this encounter to happen… infinitely small. But it did happen and I think of it often when we visit Hilton Head, SC.
He sounds delightful- I love the idea of carrying a little toy car to give to a child randomly
Not me but a fellow I knew was born in Vietnam just as the war was ending.
I don’t know what happened to his family but he ended up in an orphanage as a baby and was brought to the United States as the war came to an end. He was adopted by a family in California and spent most childhood near LA.
He was in his early 20s, shopping at Ralph’s when he noticed a young Vietnamese guy staring at him. He also noticed the guy looked just like him, like spitting image. Turns out it was his brother, his twin brother, that he never knew existed. They had come over together but adopted by different families. The organization that arranged the adoptions hadn’t put any effort into telling the families about the brothers, so they never knew of each other until that fateful day at Ralph’s.
The paradox is that even though some events are super rare, they actually tend to happen all the time. As Bloomberg points out, a lot depends on how strictly or loosely you define the terms of the coincidence. The more you “relax the definition” of something, the more you increase the odds of it happening once, twice, or more.
For example, someone winning the grand prize in a lottery is a huge deal, and it’s a rare occurrence for one lucky person. However, someone still needs to win the prize (eventually). Statistically speaking, for the group of people who decide to buy lottery tickets, it’s an inevitability. Even if nobody wins the top prize this week or month, it’ll happen sooner or later.
Dr. Phung Van Hanh of Montreal, Canada, and formerly of Danang, Vietnam, was visiting my mother in Wichita KS. We went out to a Vietnamese restaurant in town for a dinner with us, him, and some of her friends.
Dr. Hanh had got in trouble with the Communists after they won the war, and was sent to their Gulag. Somehow or other he survived and wound up in Canada. His connection to my family was that my Dad had worked with him for a month during the Tet offensive, in a hospital in Danang. We’d kept in touch off and on after that.
So here we are at the restaurant. It’s a nice, family-owned place. After the party had ordered and the food had arrived, the proprietor came out to greet the party. He looks at Dr. Hanh, their glances lock, Dr. Hanh, with some difficulty because of his age, gets to his feet, and they embrace.
They had been inmates and friends in the same death camp in Vietnam.
In a seaside French town, mid-August, height of the tourist season, I lost the key to a bike lock. It was my father-in-law’s bike, and I had borrowed his bike to shop at the other side of town from our vacation cottage. I must have left it in the lock and it fell out on the way home. Uh-oh! He was a RATHER difficult old man, and would be distraught at the loss.
So I said nothing, and the next morning, went in search of it.
Walking along the path I had taken, I entered a busy street close to the beach, where hundreds of people strolled or hurried here and there. Suddenly, I spotted a bill on the sidewalk, a ten-euro note. Wow, cool! I leaned down to grab it and it fluttered away, so I went after it, and again it fluttered away. Hmmn, very odd. Then I heard giggling. I looked up, and lo and behold, two boys on a balcony with a fishing pole, and the lure was the ten-euro bill. I wagged my finger at them, and as an afterthought, asked if they’d found a key by any chance.
“Yeah, we found a key last night right on the sidewalk.” HUH? I took the stairs to their apartment, and voilà, it was the very key to Papa-in-law’s bike lock!
In a big town with fifty thousand tourists, I happened on the two who had found my key. If that ain’t a coincidence, Idk what is!
The idea of kids doing the 'old-money-on-a-fishing-line' trick like they're in Looney Tunes cracks me up
At the age of 12 I met a new girl at school who had the same birthday as me. No big deal. Then…
Born in the same state,
same city,
same hospital,
same floor,
two doors down and
15 minutes apart from me.
We were born in Hawaii
And we met in a tiny unincorporated town in Louisiana.
On top of that, let’s consider the idea of winning multiple lotteries. Winning the top prize twice or even more is an even rarer coincidence. But if we change our parameters a bit, we can greatly increase the chances of this happening.
For instance, let’s say that the person doesn’t have to win the top prize twice; they only need to win something (anything) twice. Suddenly, the coincidence becomes much more grounded. The odds are that many of you reading this have won some sort of minor prize if you’ve ever bought lottery tickets before.
My daughter moved into a flat which needed a lot of work. On the first day there her best friend and her sister came over and together we ripped up the carpets. Underneath the carpets and underlay the floor had been lined with old newspapers and in the hallway was an old local newspaper and facing us was a photo of the two sisters in a dance competition when they were children!
This was probably 15 years ago - A newly married young couple had just moved in across the street from me. Shortly after that he was deployed overseas. Not long after he was deployed an older couple moved into the house behind them, and his wife got to know them quite well. After her husband returned the four of them got together and after some talking, they came to realize that he was their son! They had given him up for adoption when he was born in California and had just decided to move to Utah, some 25 years later. One in a million coincidence, moved to be neighbors with their son!
Oh, my gosh! What are the chances of finding your biological parents, without even trying.
I was in a big steakhouse in California about 30 years ago. The waitress, like many Americans, liked our Brit accent and happened to say their head chef was from England. Thought nothing of it because England is quite a big place with a lot of people . About an hour later as we were finishing up our desserts , the chef came out.
Conversation went something like this.
CHEF: I heard your accents and had to come out because you sound like you are from Essex.
ME: Yes all four of us are. We are from Southend on Sea. ( A very famous large Essex town recognised around the UK).
CHEF: Really. That's where I'm from. Actually Shoeburyness just outside Southend.
ME: Really! I lived there for 12 years,after I was born.
CHEF: Do you know West Road. I ran the Chippy ( fish and chip shop) there for 10 years between ’71 and ‘81.
ME: You’ve got to be joking. I used to come in your shop the last Friday of every month with my brother and my parents to get fish and chips.
What are the chances of that???
I grew up in Southend, South church area. Most of my family are still there. It's weird when you see your town come up randomly
Traveling in a fried-out Kombi on a hippie trail, head full of zombie, I met a strange lady, she made me nervous. She took me in and gave me breakfast and she said, "Do you come from a land down under where women glow and men plunder?"
That’s not to say that we can’t be in awe when we get lucky or some fortunate coincidence pops up in our lives. Quite the contrary: it’s essential that we embrace these events and feel grateful that they happened.
On the flip side, if something bad has happened to us, we shouldn't shy away from the negative feelings that spring up. We have to embrace them, even though it's uncomfortable. Otherwise, our negative feelings can enroot themselves and turn to deep-seated shame, fear, and guilt. And working through those may require months or even years of therapy.
When my kids were little in Vancouver Canada, one of my oldest boy’s best friends was a kid called Sepand. They did a lot together in daycare and then kindergarten. When he was seven, we took a family trip to Montreal on summer where one of the big events is the Jazz Festival. Hundreds of shows and a few dozen free shows every night with literally tens of thousands on the streets for those shows. In the middle of that crowd, my boy pipes up with “Hey Sepand!” and sure enough there is Sepand and his family, very randomly in exactly the same spot three thousand miles from home. Big laugh, hugs and handshakes and we go on our way.
Two years later, another summer vacation, this time in California. We visit old friends in the Bay Area and decide to drive down to the Monterey peninsula for the day. Of course we have to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of the great aquariums of the world. We go to the stingray tank where kids can actually reach in and play with the stingrays and we hear “Hey Sepand!” Once again, a thousand miles from home, Sepand and his family are in exactly the same place at the same time.
Back in 1998 I got my mother-in-law a copy of Pete Hamill’s “Snow in August” for a Mother’s Day gift. I wrote a little note to her on the fly leaf. Years later her daughter, my wife died and my MIL had to leave her home out of state to go into a long term care facility. She herself died almost ten years after my wife.
in 2016 I was making dump run to my little towns transfer station. I stopped into the Put and Take shed to see what treasures my neighbors had decided to part with. There’s a separate shed just for books and that’s where I headed. After a few minutes I spotted a copy of “Snow in August”. It was a bit beat up but I grabbed it and found my little note to my MIL on the fly leaf.
I wonder how many hands it went through to find it’s way back to me.
It was summer of 2011. My husband and I were at the beach on the Jersey shore. My eldest son was on his honeymoon in Hawaii. His shiny new Audi was in New York with my youngest son who with permission took the carto take out his then GIRLFRIEND (now wife). Being the gentleman who l raised , he proceeded to walk her to her door. Being the dumb**s that his Father raised, he left the car open with the keys in the ignition. Well, guess what happened next. Two guys jumped in and stole the shiny new Audi. We get the phone call while at the beach, not a little pissed, because like what’s gonna happen now? Can’t call the honeymooners , because how would that help ? Can’t call the insurance company because he left the keys in the ignition. So embarrassing to make the police report, but we did it. Dejected, we decide to come home early to Brooklyn and be miserable. We pack up and make our way back home. It’s like an hour ride. A very long hour with two very long faces, pick up the police report. OK. So you made it this far in the story. You deserve to hear the CRAZY part. We on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, both at the same, we see the shiny Audi. Yup, my sons car. (We knew the plate no.) We’re kind of freaking out at this point. We start following the car. We call the cops. The cops box in the stolen car, and the officer has the audacity to tell me there’s no report!! As l am feeling like knocking her out (l didn’t ), l pull out the police report and wave it in the officers face. At the exact moment. The bluetooth connects to the car. The perps get BUSTED.
Gratitude improves our lives and has been associated with our emotional, social, and psychological well-being. Not only that, but gratitude has a knock-on effect: people who feel grateful strive to extend their help to other people. Kindness, generosity, and altruism have a tendency to spread.
Which of these stories impressed you the most, Pandas? What "one-in-a-million" coincidences (whether good, bad, or nuanced) have you personally witnessed? Let us know in the comments.
This is more than 40 years ago now but I still tell it: So there i was at university with my girlfriend. She shared a room with a girl called Siobhan. Got chatting. Where are you from, where are your parents from?
Manchester. Oh, so are mine.
Where in Manchester. Prestwich. Gosh my father was from Prestwich too.
Where exactly? Canterbury drive. Wow, Your father must have known mine. He lived on Canterbury drive too.
So I ring my mum. (my father died when I was very young). Did you know xxxx? Oh yes he was our best man!
And you know what? Siobhan was our chief bridesmaid. And she and my wife are still in touch 40 years on.
Years ago I was in between jobs, so I decided to make the most of it.
I started riding a bike just to get in shape and lose some weight.
There was a long hill I had to go up and at first I had to walk the bike after going half way up.
In a couple of weeks I was able to make it all the way up. Then I proceed to make about a 15 mile round trip.
On one of those trips I was about 3 miles from my home and a pedal came off. I thought I could make it home using just one pedal…….well that didn’t work.
I tried screwing the pedal by hand……that didn’t work.
So I decided to start walking the bike home. I didn’t walk very far when I saw a wrench all mangled in the dirt. (Probably run over by the trucks using the road.)
I picked it up and the business end was a perfect fit for the pedal nut.
I tightened the pedal with the wrench and rode off into the sunset.
Here's my perfect fit story. I own a Coleman backpacking stove that has two levers, with red and black rubber tips, respectively, and I had lost the red tip. While skiing at Killington I made the short hike to the actual summit, and while standing right at the top I glance down and see a small red doohickey in the snow. Sure enough, it's a red tip for the Coleman stove. Probably much less than 1 in a million, because it's probably not an uncommon spot for hikers to stop and make a meal/tea/cocoa, but good that I found it instead of somebody simply picking it up as garbage.
Jimi Hendrix moment. Take the time to read this, it’s pretty cool.
It was the late 60’s and I was at a Hollywood party at the home of Micky Dolanz . In case you don’t remember him or know who he is, he was one of the Monkee’s. A popular recording and television artist. While I was there I was feeling pretty uncomfortable…..feeling like I was out of my element so I went down to the basement area of the house which was just as nice as the rest of the house. Micky had a pair of kaleidoscope glasses lying around down there that I was messing around with which was kind of fun. Now, at the same time there was a black man down there with me so we talked to one another for about 15 minutes. It was just the two of us. He was pretty solemn and asked me a few questions about life and the way people think. I remember that clearly.
Now fast forward to around the mid 80’s…I was out to dinner with my ex-husband who, by the way, took me to that party. He was a part of the stage crew for the television show the Monkey’s were doing. For some reason I mentioned having this odd memory about the kaleidoscope glasses and a brief conversation with the black man that was down there with me noting that he was wearing a turban. My ex said “do you really not know who that was?” I said, “no I don’t” and he said “that was Jimi Hendrix the only black man at the party”. I was floored, stunned and practically speechless and now, at 76, its one of the most treasured memories of my life. When I look back on it now, if I had known who he was the conversation wouldn’t have happened. So glad I didn’t know it was him.
So kaleidoscope glasses and a turban became a recipe for an unforgettable and memorable 15 minute coincidence.
He probably enjoyed having a normal moment of just chatting to someone not gushing over him
About 25 years ago, I decided to buy some art for my house. I ended up finding a gallery in Toronto which did a fair business in resale contemporary art, which can often be picked up at a bargain.
One of the pieces I found was a spectacular large painting of a cup, about 60 inches x 60 inches (1.5 m x 1.5 m), done by an artist named Christopher Kier. He did a series of large-format paintings of cup-like figures. What’s cool is that it’s done with encaustic, which is basically painting with liquid wax. My picture looks a lot like this one here, and it’s very interesting to touch, the surface has a very tactile feel.
Anyhow, this painting hangs on the wall of my breakfast nook, and since the pandemic, that’s where my wife sits when she works from home. The painting is in the background when she is on a video call.
About a year ago, she had a call with someone she does not normally talk to, a senior VP in the organization. They had the call, and at the end he asked her to stay on after the other people left. He said that he noticed the painting in the background. He asked her if was a Christopher Kier. She was pretty surprised, but said yes, it was.
Then he said that he was good friends with the artist, and then said “Look at this”.
He pivoted the camera, and there, hanging on his wall… was a Christopher Kier encaustic cup!
Pretty amazing.
I’m English but was working as an architect in Qatar for about 12 years, back in the nineties. My firm was approached by the Qatari Ministry of Defence to undertake some work on their air base. They had also appointed a firm of mechanical/electrical engineers to work with us.
One day, I paid a site visit along with an engineer representing the M&E firm. He also was English, but his accent placed him as coming from a different part of the UK from me. So, he asked me where my home in the UK was. At the time, my home was in a tiny hamlet in Yorkshire. The place consists of about half a dozen houses and nothing else. The conversation went something like this:
“So, where do you live in the UK?”
“I live in a small village in Yorkshire – you won’t have heard of it. It’s in the Huddersfield area.”
“Ah, whereabouts near Huddersfield?”
“Not far from Shepley (a larger village).”
“I know Shepley. Where exactly do you live?”
“Well, it’s in a place called Tall Moors (note that I’ve changed the name as my ex-wife still lives there).”
“Which house in Tall Moors?”
“It’s called Four Springs.”
“I used to live in that house.”
Apparently, this guy had moved to the area as a child when his father had been transferred to work there by his company, and they had rented the house I was now living in, from the family who had actually sold it on to me. He even knew one of my neighbours who, he said, used to be his nanny.
Given that the population of the UK is around 60 million, and Qatar is over 4,000 miles from the UK, what are the chances of meeting someone who actually used to LIVE IN YOUR HOUSE????
"what are the chances of meeting someone who actually used to LIVE IN YOUR HOUSE????" Do Ouija boards count?
Many years ago, I was riding my motorcycle in the right lane of a 4-lane highway divided by a guardrail. The car in front of me braked suddenly—no problem, I stopped easily and saw that a family of ducks had entered the highway from the right side of the road.
Seeing the ducks and the traffic in the left-hand lane approaching quickly, I turned and waved at the left-lane traffic which did come to an abrupt halt as the mother and four baby ducks continued walking. They ducked under the guardrail and proceeded, crossing in front of two oncoming lanes of fast-moving traffic. The cars in the oncoming lanes came to a literal screeching halt as the mother and four chicks, undaunted, disappeared into the weeds on the opposite side of the highway.
Whew! I was relieved that the ducks were ok, and I began to pull out from the right shoulder back onto the highway. As I was about to pull out, I had to wait for a car that had stopped behind me and was already moving down the road. As that car passed me, I looked at the license plate which read “5 DUCKS”!
My parents told me this story. When I was 8 years old living in the UK, my dad took a job opportunity in the USA and we emigrated. My parents decided to rent out our home in the UK so before we left we were showing the house to perspective tenants. One was an American guy. Turns out he was from the same city in the US that we were about to move to in a few weeks time. They laughed over the coincidence and the American guy said that his adult daughter is still in the US and we should look her up when we get there. He gave us her name and that she works in a particular restaurant in the city.
Fast forward a few weeks and fly to the US. we arrive at the airport, tired after flying halfway across the world! We are met at the airport by a representative of my dad’s new company and he drives us to a hotel. On the way we stop for some food. It’s late and there’s not a lot of places still open. The rep says he knows a place that’s open late. Yep, the same place the American tenant’s daughter works at. We end up getting served by her! So we rent out our UK home to a random American guy and move to America and end up meeting the guy’s daughter working half an hour of leaving the airport!
Not sure why, but I was just certain they were going to end up renting the residence of the random American while he rented from them
Some years ago, I spent a summer working for a law firm. My job involved calling and interviewing plaintiffs in a class action suit that they were working on. I had a list of names and telephone numbers, and a list of questions to ask. I would call, as for “Joe Anderson” or whomever, then spend half an hour or so interviewing Mr. Anderson about his claim.
One of the phone numbers on the list was for a woman in Georgia (I am not from Georgia). I called the number. But I accidentally transposed two digits when I dialed - instead of dialing 555–1234 I dialed 555 -1324 or something like that.
A voice answered the phone.
I said “May I please speak to Sylvia Podunk?” (or whatever the name was)
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
The person on the other end said “would you please repeat that?”
I said “Of course - may I please speak to Sylvia Podunk?”
The voice said “ Is this Mark McCain?”
I had accidentally dialed a girl that I had dated in high school about 10 years before. I had lost touch with her after graduation. She was now living in Georgia. When I accidentally dialed her number, she recognized my voice over the phone and realized it was me!
I was in NY 1979 with my brother. There was a guy about same age as me with a BMW motorcycle same limited edition 1000cc model that I had in London UK.I spoke to him about bike and told him about my one. Got impression did not fully believe me about owning one same model.
A few months later whilst riding my one in London UK, I saw him on holiday with friends about to cross the street. Said Hi remember me NY we talked about your bike same as this one. Nice to see you again. He looked double shocked one about bike, and two seeing me again riding it 6000 miles away! Had a few words then off I rode, never saw him again as no reason to exchange numbers. Odds against that must have been on par with winning lottery!
My brother had this happen. He and his family were on a road trip and their car broke down. They were close enough to a gas station to push it there. There was a man there asking for gas money. My brother gave it to him and the man turned out to be a mechanic and fixed my brother’s car at no charge.
We'd got a new rescue dog. Got her as a pup. Approximately 6 months later, we'd gone on a day trip to the coast. Stopped at lunchtime at a little village pub that had outside tables. I got us a couple of drinks, snacks etc and we sat at one of the tables. Got talking to a couple at the next table with a young dog who seemed about the same age as ours. It only turned out that they had got their dog from the same rescue centre and both dogs were actually brother and sister from the same litter. Not only that, they actually lived close to us.
My first winter in Maine I stayed in a room above a garage with only a space heater. It was so cold the homeowners let their large American Bulldog sleep with me. Really it was to keep warm. A few years later at work I met another nurse who was a dob breeder . Even though it was an hour away she was the breeder of the dog. The couple never paid for the dog, but the woman was quite happy that her pup at least went to a good home where she was love and appreciated. Loki was a wonderful pup!
I joined the Army at 19, my first assignment was Frankfurt/Main, Germany. First time there. About a month after being barracks bound. I decided to go down town. A beautiful sunny day. This was 1965. The young woman in summer dresses. I saw this beautiful brunette and I winked at her and she winked back. Long story short we dated and married, We were married for 54 years. About 10 years ago I took an interest in Ancestry DNA. I researched my family. My mother’s mother was German and her name was Reese. I only had the tip of the iceberg on their information. At one point I decided to look into my wife’s ancestry. Her grandfather’s family name was Weingarth and he was from Kusel, a small village in Germany with a population less than 1,000. Later I obtained additional information on great grandmother Reese. In the middle of the 1700’s, information showed that the family came from the village of Kusel also, in fact the name Weingarth was part of the family. So, in a country of 80 million, what is the chance I would meet and marry someone from my family tree.
This happens quite a lot in Alabama where a distant cousin is someone who lives on the other side of the city
I’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay area for about 30 years. My wife and I made reservations to stay at a little B&B on East Brother Light station, a tiny island with a lighthouse in the San Francisco Bay, near Richmond, that has a small house that can take about ten guests. All the guests eat together at a communal dining table.
At dinner time, after the most basic introductions, people were describing where they were from. One guy said he was from New Jersey and Western Massachusetts. I said that I had spent a couple of college summers near Pittsfield, Mass. He asked for details. I told him I was a counselor at YMCA Camp Becket. He started singing the camp theme song, and I joined in. We found out we knew some people in common. He said he’d been a camper one of the years I had been a counselor. He asked me to repeat my name. It turns out I had been his counselor, for four weeks one summer, about forty years ago! I had been a counselor for two years, each year with two sessions, each session with eight campers. There are 32 people in the world that had been my kids at camp, and one of them was among the ten people that spent the night on this island, forty years later!
It gets better. We found out that since our last meeting, we had both spent time doing habitat restoration in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, working under the same park rangers. And we had both married Venezuelans.
My dad passed away 10 years ago, long before my son, Orion, had ever been born. Although, I did name him in-part for my dad, as my dad was a hunter and seeing the constellation, Orion, made me feel like he was peering down on me. Flash forward, my son is 6, and has always had an unexplainable connection to my dad, often telling people and strangers how much he misses him (despite my dad passing 4 years before Orion was even born). One night, Orion can't sleep, he's worried he's going to forget my dad. We talk about it and I ask him if he wants to see some pictures of my dad and pick one out to hold on to. He excitedly says yes and I pull out my box of dad mementos. He picks out a picture asks to tape it to his wall by the bed and goes to sleep. I'm flipping through the box as I get ready to put it away and come across a card I made for my dad when I was about 13. Inside, is a picture of my dad and I, but the picture is randomly off center. My OCD gets the best of me, so Im scanning the background trying to figure out why whoever snapped this shot took it so off center. Then my heart nearly stops as I see a box in the background with ORION written on the side in big red letters. What are the chances?! It's also interesting to note that the picture was obviously taken in October, as my mom's Halloween decorations are on display, and Orion, was nearly born on Halloween 17-18 years AFTER this photo was taken. I didn't want him to be a Halloween baby, so I pushed like hell and he was born just before 11pm on October 30th! I'm not sure what it all means, but definitely a one in a million “coincidence”.
2 years ago on Christmas Eve I had to go to the judicial building to get a copy of my child custody papers as I had misplaced mine. It was 8 am and I was ready to go but then my friend showed up and started talking to me, I kept saying that I had to go but the conversation kept going on somehow? An hour and a half later we finally concluded our discussion and I was off the get my papers, upset that I was running behind as well!
As I was walking up the steps to the building I saw a man with white hair walking away from the building, his entire back was facing me but I just knew it was my dad whom I hadn't seen in at least 5 years! My dad lives on the streets and is homeless, he lost all of his family! My grandmother grandfather and his brother had all passed away and he has no one but me, so I yelled dad, dad, he didn't turn around then I said Adolf and he turned right around, it was him! We ran to each other embraced one another in a big hug! We spent Christmas Eve together that day! It was a Christmas miracle! If my friend had not come to my house that morning and stood taking to me I would have never run into my dad at that specific moment in time! It was great!
Another story that I have questions, but I can only hope that Op helped his Dad to get back on his feet.
My wife and I were on holidays in a small seaside town south of Sydney, Australia.
We were just walking around and ended up in a side street quite some distance from the main shops.
We spotted a sign about handmade soaps and walked up the driveway of a small cottage to a garage at the back of the property.
My wife was looking around the various offerings. Me being the dutiful husband, I tagged along.
We were the only customers.
Understandable in such an out of the way location.
After a while, I spied another couple entering.
I recognised the woman immediately.
My wife still hadn't noticed them.
I forget what witty comment I made get wife's attention to focus on them, but then all hell broke loose.
You see, the woman was a girl we had gone to high school with, and had last seen over 10 years before.
The woman, her sister and my wife had been good friends.
The coincidence?
The woman had moved to South Africa to live where her husband worked.
They had just visited his parents in Melbourne (look it up) and were driving on to Sydney to see her parents.
They had stopped in the town for one of their rest breaks and to stretch their legs, as it's a 9 hour drive from Melbourne and they had a final 2 hours to go.
The chances of the four of us being in this obscure little place at exactly the same time must be more than a million to one.
P.S. If you see this answer in a shared space, please upvote the original post.
My husband and I were shopping at new Hope Pennsylvania in 1995. He really wanted a leather duster but since we were going on vacation soon we asked if we could put it on layaway. The young man sales clerk looked skeptical but said OK as long as we came back in a month to get it. I don’t think he believed we were actually going on vacation.
so we crossed the country on the motorcycle and got to the Yellowstone national Park sign where of course we wanted to take pictures. A family was just getting out of a minivan so we went up to them to ask if they would take our picture. Wouldn’t you know it one of the kids in the van was our sales clerk! I guess he believed us then lol!
When I was 14, my dad took the family on a camping vacation to Yellowstone National Park. The afternoon we arrived at the campground, we had set up our tent and were starting to cook supper when we heard yelling from the neighboring campsite.
The person yelling turned out to be my high school science teacher. That’s the first one-in-a-million thing.
The second one-in-a-million thing: the reason he was yelling was because he had just found one of the rarest of US pennies, a 1909 S VDB, among some change. A holy grail for a numismatist.
Very cool, very unlikely, but true!
Years ago I was stationed at RAF Odiham in Hampshire and on a whim I decided to travel to London for the day. At about 17:00 I found myself standing outside HMV in Leicester Square when who should step out the door but my father this is in a city of eight million people (at the time he did a lot of work in London).
We were both surprised to see each other (understatement) I asked my father what are you doing here?? as the family home was in Hertfordshire some distance north of London. Apparently, Mother was on a coach trip with her friends and was in London to see The King and I so he thought he would surprise her and take Mum for a meal after the show.
We both then went to the theatre to welcome Mum off the coach her face was a picture.
I know someone who had a son in the military, she was traveling for the holidays and was at the Atlanta airport, as she's walking past the payphones, she hears a familiar voice, her son just happened to be at the airport on a layover on his way to his next deployment. They got to have an impromptu family reunion for about 30 minutes
My mother was born on September 24th, 1917 at 4:45 PM. When she was 21 she gave birth to my brother. He was delivered at home in the farmhouse and my mother had a very difficult delivery. After my brother was born she was told by the doctors that as a result, she could not have anymore children. Year later she thought she had a tumor and went to see her family doctor. He informed her that she was indeed pregnant again. When I was born, she kept asking the nurses what day is it? The nurses thought she was crazy and said don’t you want to know what you had? A boy or a girl? My mother insisted. Turns out I was born on September 24th, 1947 at 4:45PM. Thirty years to the minute. We shared that birthday every year for sixty years as if we were twins. Since her passing, I have not celebrated my birthday again.
She can't celebrate her birthday anymore so you need to celebrate it for her
Long time ago when I was young, I used to chat in the chatrooms. One day, I met a senior from my college, who was doing his postdoc in Switzerland. Incidentally he and I have the same first name. We often used to chat about studies, his life there, his Swiss Girlfriend. Anyway couple of months after that, I am returning from US to India and I meet this guy on flight and we started talking. He asked me what is my major. I said geology. He said wow my elder brother is also a geologist. Then he asks me which college, I said Presidency College. He says same for my brother. He is two years senior to me and his name is same as mine. Suddenly it struck me. I asked is your brother doing postdoc in Switzerland. He said, how do you know that. I have been chatting with his brother and happen to meet him on a flight back to India. What are the odds? We had a good flight home chatting all the way from US to India. That was a million to one chance.
I went to Japan on business when working for a company some years ago. I had never been there before and apart from the work I was doing, my hosts took me to various places for sightseeing. One weekend we took the bullet train to Kyoto. We were out that evening heading for a restaurant, when I suddenly heard the sound of British folk music! I recognised the singing. As we came around the corner, I saw friends from my local folk club in Oxford standing there busking - and doing pretty well from the look of their rather full hat on the ground. We stared at one another and then laughed. “Wanna join in?” they asked. “Sure!” said I, and I joined them for one song that we knew and could perform - which went down well with the audience, and also my hosts, who thought me pretty versatile. So I went thousands of miles from the UK, only to bump into a folk band I used to see just down the road from where I lived!
In my teens, I met a girl named Karen in New York City, and we've been friends ever since. She married an English man named Will and they still live in Manhattan. It's been a friendship that's lasted close to 50 years.
In my 30s, I met an online friend who lives in England, Allison. While vacationing, I met her in person, along with her husband, John. We've been friends for nearly 30 years.
Last year, Allison posted on Facebook some worrisome news, and in leaving a comment, I noticed another comment by someone with the same name as the husband of my American friend, Karen. I clicked on the name, and it was my friend Karen's husband, Will.
WHAAA? But this was my other friend Allison's page!
Turns out that Karen's husband Will and Allison's husband John were lifelong best buddies, went to school together, and were inseparable until Will moved to America to marry Karen.
Somehow, two of my good friends, who live on two different continents, who I met decades apart, who are not in the least bit alike, who have never met one another, are married to best friends. That's got to be a once in a lifetime coincidence.
We were on a cycling holiday in France and had bought a bottle of wine to go with our side-of-the-road-by a-stream lunch. While cycling to it, I remembered that I didn’t have a corkscrew and discussed with my wife about how to open the bottle. Literally 5 minutes later i saw an old corkscrew lying in the middle of a cross-roads. What are the chances?! We still have and use it today
This is France after all. We have corkscrews lying around all over the country in random places for such emergencies. Bring your bottles to us in need of opening...
Back in February of 2013. I was in a high-speed rollover in which my younger brother was killed.
A few weeks later, I'm in a different town. And like alot of people do when dealing with trauma and loss, I was at a bar going to drown my pain. I see this woman who keeps glancing my direction. After a few minutes, she approached me, and starts with the banal small talk. What bring you here…where you from. And I start telling her what's going on, mind you, I had crutches with me. So I started explaining them.
After filling her in (as much as I was willing to share at that point) She looks at me, and expresses her condolences on my loss.
She asked when this happend. I told her it was only a few weeks ago. (hence the crutches) After hearing the exact date, her eyes change. They went from gentle, curious eyes, to a look of confusion, or shock. She pauses, looks up to the sky, mumbles a few words, as if in prayer. She then reaches into her purse, and pulls out a white ,folded paper. Not saying a word, she slides it on the table in my direction. I pick it off the table, flip it over, and see a picture of a young man, but it had a ..(excuse my ignorance) start date and end date??
Anyways, the paper I was reading, was the memorial of her younger brother. Although the first dates were different. The second dates, were the same day. Of the same year. Feb. 02/2013.
This woman had lost her brother in a car accident. (I'm not sure where) on the same day as I lost mine. She was in the same town, in the same bar, doing the same thing I was. For the exact same reason!
I thought they were going to say their brother was an organ donor recipient!
Several years ago, my wife and I were on vacation from Sacramento up to Northern California, with the in-laws, when we pulled into a gas station in Crescent City. As I was filling up, my wife got out and said, “I think that’s my art teacher from high school”, back in Aurora, CO. Sure enough it was. She was there with her brother. They reminisced for a bit and then we went our separate ways.
A few years later, we were back in the UK (where I’m from) visiting family. As it was my Mum’s 70th birthday, we treated her to a few days in Majorca. After one night at our place, we realised there wasn’t enough toilet paper so we went into a small store - and who should we bump into, but the same art teacher! And her brother! Also looking for TP! Talk about small world. That was 6 years ago now, but we’re still blown away by the odds of it happening.
I was in high school and this new girl that I did not know walked up to me. She knew my name (no biggie), but she knew a lot about the small elementary school I had gone to which was about 100 miles away. I had no idea who she was until she started singing this song she had sung in 3rd grade in our school’s talent show. I immediately knew who she was. I think I shouted her full name and gave her a hug I did not know her that well in elementary school, but it was incredible to run into her again.
I had a similar thing happen. I moved after middle school about 60 miles away. My sophomore year I was hanging out at lunch at the smoke pit and heard someone call me from behind. When I turned around it was a good friend that I had had a huge crush on. We ended up dating for a few months before he had to move away again.
Many years ago, I was traveling on a train in Europe. I was in a ‘cabin’ for 6 with three other people. My then-girlfriend (now wife of nearly 33 years) and a couple from New York (that is important). I’m from California, so in Europe it feels like you are next door neighbors - even with someone from across the country. We got to talking and the woman from New York said she worked in theater off-Broadway. I asked if she’d gone to school. She had — at Northwestern. Hmmm, my sister went to Northwestern to study theater. So I asked. As I mentioned my sister’s very unique first name, the woman from New York gave me my sister’s last name. WOW!
My first or second year in private practice, I decided to attend a minimally invasive surgery conference in Las Vegas.
After a day of lectures, I was sitting at a blackjack table, and a group of men sat down with me. They started talking to me and bragging to me about their work which involved research at a very tiny biotech start up in Memphis.
I listened for a bit then I started asking them specific questions about other people who worked there. They were very confused.
Eight years previously I spent the summer between my first and second years in medical school (the last Summer break of my life) at that same tiny bio tech lab modifying an agricultural virus to target glioblastoma tumors.
Small world.
In 1995 I visited my husband for a month in Viet Nam. He was on a job there for a year. While I was there, I met a man named Mr Tien. Upon coming home , I had a one in a million coincidence happen. I was getting my nails done in a shop that I had never used before. I asked one of the women in the shop if she was Vietnamese. She said she was and came from DaNang . I asked her if she was familiar with the Non Nouc Seaside Resort. Her eyes got big and said yes and that she had her wedding there and allso stating that her husband worked there. I asked her if he knew Mr Tien. She was so surprised with me saying his name and exclaimed…My husband and Mr. Tien are very good friends. So here I was in NC in a nail shop finding a woman who knew someone I knew. That 6 degrees of separation is real.
Funny. Usually the "oh, you are from [country]? Do you know [specific person]?" trope gets annoying rather quickly, but here it turned out to be true.
In 1972&’73 I was in the navy and stationed at Pearl Harbor. Myself and 3 others from my ship rented an apartment in Waikiki, on the Ala Wai canal near the Int'l Marketplace. We had some buddies from another ship in our squadron living about half a block away. We partied together virtually daily, went to concerts, and went to other islands together. Pretty tight buds.
We all got out of the navy in ’73-’75 and went our separate ways. I went to Palm Springs CA and then on to college in Oregon, even though I was from the Mid-West. In ’75 at spring break, my girlfriend said she wanted to go to Seattle (Renton) because her cousin was getting married there in June, and she was to be the maid of honor.
Off we went to Renton. On arriving, we found her house, and went up to knock. Her fiancée answered the door. It was Doug, one of my good buds from Hawaii! I yelled Doug, he yelled Jim. The girls just stared at us , shocked that we knew one another. We were as shocked as they were. The party began immediately and continued again in June at the wedding.
My wife and I went to a couples weekend at a nearby Christian camp, with speakers, workshops, etc. To end the evening we all retired to the dining hall for coffee, cookies, the usual…
Another woman at our table for 8 turned out to be the sister of one of my wife’s dear friends. But that is NOT the coincidence…
I got to chatting with the husband, and for some reason we discovered we were both almost exactly the same age, born a day apart in 1950. Then we chatted more and realized we weren’t both just born in San Francisco, but at the same hospital: St. Joseph’s. That was when moms routinely stayed in the hospital for a few days after giving birth, so my new friend and I actually were roommates 45 years earlier, having been in the hospital nursery at the same time.
I was on the phone for IT support and instead of having a foreign accent, she had a Quebec accent, so I switched to French. It was really early morning - think 1-2 am - and it wasn't busy so we started chatting. It just happens that we were born the same year at the same hospital, with a few weeks between us. If someone knows the city where I was born, I usually say "city x, at hospital x", which I did on the phone. She said it was the first time she knew of someone born in the same hospital as she did; she was emotional about it too.
Years ago, a high school I went to as a freshman was converted to apartments, then to condos.
About 10 years ago I was travelling in Europe as a retirement present to myself, and in France, overheard some people from my city talking. I joined them and it turned out that one of them had a son who lived in one of those condos.
So far, so good—the usual small world.
A few days later I was in another town, in Germany, where I ate at a restaurant that had people all sitting at a communal table. I told my small world story. The guy across from me turned out to have been the head carpenter on the conversion of the high school to condos.
The small world got really, really smaller.
When I was in college, I took a Shakespeare class with around one hundred other students. There was a girl, I never spoke to her or knew her, roughly three desks to my right, one row forward.
Several years later I traveled to Greece on a train, randomly, with no prior planning, just working my way across Europe.
Once in Athens, I wandered around until I found a small neighborhood and walked into a restaurant, sat down and ordered.
That girl was three tables to my right, on row forward. I didn’t even greet her, as I didn’t know her at all. I just thought it was trippy.
My story is completely ridiculous and I wouldn't believe it if it hadn't happened to me.
Around 1990 I was driving a taxicab in Philadelphia, I caught a long fare from Bucks county, Pa. to a hotel south of the Philadelphia international airport, it's about a 40 mile shot directly down I-95. I dropped them, then as I was leaving the parking lot, my front passenger-side wheel broke off. A seized bearing burned through the spindle.
Fast-forward to 2006, I'm driving a limo and I get passengers going to that same hotel, I dropped them, and when I exited the parking lot, my front passenger-side wheel fell off, in the exact same spot.
I've never had a wheel fall off in 30yrs driving cabs… except these two times. But in the same place, it's crazy.
OK this happened to my grandfather in WW2. He was in the British army. He came from the Borders region of Scotland, i.e. just north of the border with England, and he had a strong Scottish accent like many from that area.
In the Netherlands in 1944/45, he was walking back to his base with another Scottish soldier when they were captured by an American patrol. The Americans struggled with their accents, and weren't very familiar with the British uniforms. They were also a bit jittery because there had been cases of German soldiers putting on allied uniforms, walking into the allied bases, and opening fire. The Americans also had a reputation for not taking prisoners. So my Grandad and his companion genuinely feared that they were just going to be shot out of hand.
Then one of the American soldiers said to my Grandad’s companion “Did you come over on the D-Day landings?”
“Yes I did”
“What ship were you on?”
- He named the ship.
“It's alright sir,” said the American to his officer, “I recognise him. I was on the same ship”.
I was just talking about this with my younger brother yesterday. I need to give a bit of back story for the one in a million (actually I think higher than that) coincidence to make sense.
I am one of nine children my mother had from three separate marriage’s. My older brother, who is nine years ahead of me, ran away at 14 to go live with his father and we hadn’t seen him since that time. I was five.
We move towns and so have a different phone number. Though this was the late 80’s or early 90’s so I’m pretty sure caller ID was not a thing yet anyway.
My teenage self and my younger sister, by four years, both want to call our friends at the same time. We each grab a phone and start dialing our friend’s phone numbers. Who we get is my older brother. Not only that, but he somehow recognized our voices. I was a child when he left and was now a teen.
I don’t believe in G-d per se, but that is not something that is explainable.
I remember, back in the early seventies in a small town, calling a friend from school. I never heard the line ring, but there she was saying hello! She had dialed my number at the exact same millisecond as I dialed her number, and we were connected before the line could either ring or gave the busy signal.
When I was in graduate school, there was an attractive undergraduate woman who worked at the coffee bar in our building. I routinely made the standard friendly remarks to test the waters. One Monday I asked her how her weekend went. She said she went home to celebrate her birthday on Saturday. I was stunned because Saturday had been my birthday as well. The odds against accidentally standing next to someone with the same birthday as you are 365 to 1. I said “Wow, Saturday was my birthday!” But before the shock could wear off our stunned faces, another student standing by us said: “That’s amazing, Saturday was my birthday as well.” The odds against that are 133,225 to 1. And when you factor in the odds against discovering that you happen to be standing next to two people with the same birthday, the odds are virtually incalculable.
I used to babysit three siblings, six-year-old twins, who had been born on the same date as their nine-year-old sister, which was also their grandmother's birthday. The odds may seem long, but there are an awful lot of humans on this planet and only 366 possible dates, they are going to align from time to time.
A few years after getting married, my wife and I were talking about childhood experiences and I related a story of a fishing trip to Port Aransas Texas when I was around 10 years old. We were at a relatively secluded pier fishing the ship channel. Fishing was slow, but still enjoyable. A family arrived and setup at the opposite end of the T-head on the pier. What was most memorable to me was the children all sat quietly by their parents feet without talking or playing as children are prone to do. Almost as soon as their lines hit the water the fish stopped biting. A short time later, a shrew of a woman started grumbling that they had ruined the fishing. She continued the vitriolic attack on the family and started riling up the other fishermen to the point that the family packed up and ran from the pier.
The one in a million chance was that family turned out to be my wife’s family 15 years earlier.
After I got married, we went to Cancun, Mexico for our honeymoon.
While we were there we met a couple who had just got married and were from a Place called Aflreton in the county of Derbyshire, which is in England.
I am from a town called Swanwick, next door to Alfreton in Derbyshire, in England.
We had met exactly once before, as it turned out that he was the same age as me, but had gone to a different school, a school we had played in a rugby tournament, where I played fullback for my school and he played as a wingback.
In that match, I managed to stop him from scoring a couple of tries.
Still think it is crazy that a guy I met once before in an interschool tournament I met again 13 years later in a holiday resort half way around the world.
My band was booked in Moab, Utah for three days. We arrived at the band house a little early and were hanging out in the living room while a young lady finished cleaning the bedrooms. Meanwhile, I was sitting by the fireplace petting her very friendly huge German shepherd. When she walk into the room to tell us that the rooms were ready, the dog bit my hand! It was deep and bleeding and hurt like the dickens. My bandmate helped clean the wound. When we finished, the young lady and the dog were gone.
About 6 months later down in New Mexico, the guitar player and I decided to go to an all-night Denny’s for a midnight snack after a gig. The waitress asked if she could take our order and I asked her how her dog was. Her eyes went wide and she about passed out. As the explanations poured, I assured her I was fine.
Moral of the story: You can run but you can’t always hide.
I know they cleaned up the wound, but at the same time, I hope Op went to see a doc for that bite; and, likewise, the dog is ok.
I was in Paris one summer. I had spent a summer session studying in Europe and was in line at a cafeteria. I was wearing an Indiana University sweatshirt. An American couple in line asked me if I really went to IU. I said yes, and they told me that they were from Anderson, IN, my hometown. It turns out I had gone to high school with their son.
As God is my witness, I'm driving through Anderson, IN right now reading this and I live here.
In 1989 I went to Asia for a 14 day business trip, flew First Class on United’s Royal Pacific service including Singapore Air, the best airline in the world for comfort. After 14 days my business partner and I got on the big ole 747 for the ride back. I was seated in the very first seat; he was a couple of rows behind me, which was good because after 2 weeks together I was pretty sick of him even though we were good friends. While I was settling in with my mimosa, the flight attendant comes up and says, “Mr Bazzinotti, can you exchange seats with this handicapped man?” and there was a guy in a wheelchair. And I said, “No, I paid for this seat and I am not sitting 12 hours in Coach.” and she said, “No, it’s the seat right behind this one. The front row just has more legroom.” So I did. I slid into the window seat in the next row in my big lounger seat and settled in. Then the guy next to me tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Did she call you Bazzinotti?” and I said, “Ya, what of it?” because I was tired and just wanted to go to sleep. And then he said, “My name is Bazzinotti.” And I looked at him. I didn’t know him and I knew pretty much everyone in the massive Bazzinotti clan. He took out his passport and showed me. It turns out he was a cousin who had spent the last 20 years in Thailand. I had never met him.
(There’s a second part to this story my dad told me later; he had stolen money from the mob in Boston and moved to Thailand to escape them and it was his first trip back. Within three days of his return they found him dead in the Fells. The police said he killed himself while jogging in the woods. In street shoes. Ya sure.)
Many years ago my wife and I and our 2 kids were at a shop picking out carpet our new home. We get in the car to go home and my wife asks “I’d like to stop by the library on the way home for some books for the kids. Do you know if it’s still open?” to which I reply “I don’tknow but I’ll call to see”, and I pull the library card out of the center console.
I dial the number on the library card and the answer is “Bob’s flooring” (or something like that). I am sitting in their parking lot! Do they have some sort of technology to intercept cell. phone calls when you’re near their store? Did I accidentally hit re-dial? What is going on!? I crane my neck to look at the sign above the car (parked next to it so I had to look almost straight up), and printed on the sign is the same number as on the library card.
The library must have released that number (the card was several years old) and the carpet shop picked it up. It ended in 1000 or something like that so it would have been desirable for a business. Mystery pretty much solved. But still, what are the chances that the only time I ever called the library from that card, I happened to be sitting in the parking lot of the business that had taken over the number.
I still don’t believe in gods or ghosts, but that was such a weird coincidence that it still find it amazing.
About 10 years ago I went to Turkey on holiday. I thought it would be a good idea to go on at least one day trip while I was there so I went into one of the places where you could book a trip.
The man who ran it spoke really good English, his daughter, who was about 12 did too, so we got chatting. I complimented him on his excellent English and he told me he’d lived in the UK for 12 years.
Of course I asked him where.
“Oh just a little place you’ve probably never heard of - Chester”
(I’m from Chester)
It turns out that he ran a chippie 2 miles away from my house.
😏
I don’t know what it is about chip shops, but 15 years prior to that my mother had been on holiday in Cyprus and had taken a bus way up into the hills and chatted to the owner of the little cafe where she stopped for a drink - it turns out that he had run a chippie in Ellesmere Port, right next to the school I was working in at the time.
There was a senior at my previous company who used to work on the same project inside the same ODC. He was three years elder than me. However, since we were in different teams, we didn't get a chance to interact with each other much except for a brief Hi and Hello.
In 2020, I left the company and joined Copado, my present employer. In 2021, coincidentally, he also left the company and joined Copado. Again, since we were in different teams, we didn't talk much and, as we are working from home, I never met him after leaving the previous company.
Today, we have a team event in Jaipur and many employees from different parts of the country will be assembling under the same roof to participate in that event. After landing at Jaipur airport, I was standing near the baggage claim belt waiting for my bag to arrive and just on the adjacent baggage claim belt, I noticed a familiar face. I walked up to him to see it was that senior of mine from my previous company!
We were on different flights — he was flying from Kolkata while I flew from New Delhi, but our flights landed almost around the same time in Jaipur and luck had it that we met at the airport! But that's not all. We have our flight back tomorrow and we are on the same flight. Nothing of this was pre-planned! This is the ultimate level of co-incidence that I have ever experienced for sure.
I was in Mallorca. We have a boat there. I remained on board whilst my wife took the children to the beach.
The kids met some other kids. She met the parents. Rather trustingly she then bought the kids back to our boat for the trip back to Palma whilst the parents drove back.
We become good friends.
Their parents had a house in the middle of the island and we went over for dinner.
The parents were there and we got talking. They were from Leeds which is where my mother was from.
it turned out her brother David ( now dead) was his best friend at school and he knew my mother well ( mum is also dead ).
I found this firstly very interesting and secondly one in a million that the parents of some random people we met on a beach knew my mother and uncle.
Thirty years ago my friend and I did our junior year abroad in England. During the spring break, we toured Europe including a stop in Greece.
We were on the overnight ferry from Greece to Italy in March. It was cold and like many American college tourists, we could not afford a room on the boat. We were stuck outside on the deck.
We met a few American girls who needed refuge from the cold and from some deckhands who offered them rooms in exchange for some special favors. Somewhere there was a picture of 7 of us huddled on a bench covered in blankets.
Fast forward a year and a half.
I went to dinner with my girlfriend in NJ. Our waitress walked up to the table and I ask, “were you on a ferry from Greece to Italy last spring?”
Indeed she had been and was amazed that I had remembered her.
"We met a few American girls who needed refuge from the cold and from some deckhands who offered them rooms in exchange for some special favors." 🤣
I met my future ex-wife at a six-day conference. We hit it off right away. She had to leave a day early, so I saw her into the airport shuttle and went back to the talks.
A few hours later, I looked up and there she was! Her flight had gotten canceled so she came back.
We decided to skip the last talk and go to a restaurant together. We went to her rent-a-car, got in, she turned on the ignition, and the radio started playing…
“One more night, give me just one more night!”
There aren’t literally a million songs that could have played instead, but it was also the perfect point in the song. So it might actually be a one in a million coincidence.
[Edited to add: There’s more than 2 million seconds in a month. A random coincidence can happen at any time. So one might expect several one-in-a-million coincidences per year - and of course, they’ll be a lot more memorable than the millions of seconds that don’t contain coincidences.]
One night I’m out with friends going to an after party for a local benefit. As we’re walking across the street in a crosswalk I’m ahead of the pack and a car (Toyota Corolla) slams into me doing about 35mph (10′ skid mark post impact) I go up from the bumper then smashed into the windshield, the car screeches to a stop catapulting me up into the air, (unfortunately due to the effects of gravity, as they say what goes up must come down) then I'm slammed onto the ground. After a moment of blackout, I roll from my back onto my hands and knees, stand up, (legs not broken!!) dust off (I was actually checking for torn clothes with a brand new Canali suit on) the driver was out of his car and in a bit of a panic, my friends got his license and insurance information but…“I need a beer" so I promptly proceed into the after party and dust off the glass from my head, back and shoulders. (The car was later towed away!)
I was definitely in shock with 2 massive impacts to my head from the car windshield then the asphalt. However nothing was broken, just badly bruised.
Months later after a few spine surgeries and a lawsuit to recover medical costs, personal damages, etc… I looked up the name of the 19 year old kid that hit me and put together the puzzle. The car was registered to a corporation in Colorado that I recognized and was briefly involved with.
About 7-8 years prior while visiting Denver Colorado I met this same kid at his home during a dinner party hosted by his mom and dad. At the time of this car encounter, I was living in Stockton California crossing the street and he’s there visiting a friend driving down the same street where he hit me! What’s the odds of that???
always a good idea when you have a head injury to drink a beer. that way your internal bleeding happens way faster.
When I was 15 I was temporarily living with a family in a small town near Las Vegas, Nevada. My mother was very ill at the time with a lifelong disease and we only spoke about once a month. We spent that summer before I was 16 vacationing in several different states, and although my parents knew we were traveling, they didn’t know where and when. During one of our trips we were staying in a large hotel in Salt Lake City and I was in an elevator going down to the lobby by myself when a lone man joined me on the elevator. He looked at me for a minute or so and said “Nancy?” It turned out he was the man who lived next door to my parents in Colorado. We spoke about “the odds of running into each other” and then went our separate ways.
So the people I was staying with who lived in Nevada took a trip to Utah where we stayed in a hotel for one night only. My next door neighbor from Colorado came to Utah for one night on his way to California and stayed in the same hotel on the same floor - and happened to get on the elevator at the exact same time I did - the only time I left the hotel room the entire night.
This coincidence always made me think what a small world it can be at times.
We moved about 200 miles for a new job. A nice place in the new area was difficult to find at the time, but we eventually bought one in a road with only 18 houses.
About ten years later I had to go back temporarily when my mother became ill. One evening I went to a pub for a meal, but it was dead quiet with only two couples in the bar. One couple were the licensees, the other their friends who lived next door, and this was the last night before selling the place. When I explained how I was stuck, they very decently made me a meal.
Of course we chatted and they asked where I was from. It turned out that the neighbours had moved years before from the same road I was living in, and I passed their address to several of my new neighbours when I got back.
First day on campus, I was dismayed to realize I had ended up on the wrong side of a long, long hedge. Being very skinny and outdoorsy, I decided to cut through it, but it was slightly more difficult than I first estimated. Reaching the other side, feeling like I had climbed through a jungle, I was now disheveled and came to a very well-dressed man on the other side. Deflecting my awkardness I joked, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" (From a legendary story of David Livingstone meeting Dr Henry Stanley in the depth of the African jungle.) The man was arriving on campus to be announced as the new university president. And his name just happened to be Dr Livingston. (No, we didn't get married; that would've been weird.)
Over 20 years ago, I rode my small V50 Moto Guzzi in southern Germany when all of a sudden my speedometer drive broke... the drive was part of the hub of the front wheel, not the best solution.... I was just in front of a car dealership and I asked them for a tool to remove the wire.... the owner told me "Oh in the past, my father used to sell this brand of motorcycles, I wonder...." and yes, he found the spare part for a almost 20 year old italian motorbike which was only for 2 years in production. He sold it to me for the price on the price tag...
A workmate of mine visits Malta regularly to see family there. On one trip she and her family decided to try a little cafe for lunch, and the owner came out to chat and discovered my workmate lived in Melbourne. "Oh you'll know my cousin" he said. "Probably not, Melbourne is a big place" says my workmate. The cafe owner told her his cousins name and my workmate had to say "Ah. Yes. he's my hairdresser" haha. Melbourne not that big after all.
In 2017 I was on a small boat taking a ride from Marahau, a small settlement near Nelson in New Zealand to a trail head. I was to run back the 20 miles or so through the Abel Tasman National Park. On the boat I got talking to a fellow Brit. Anyway fast forward about a year and I was on an underground train on the Bakerloo Line in London and a guy opposite me was staring at me. Finally he came over and it was the very same guy I had been talking to that day in New Zealand.
I was in NYC in 1999. Was sitting on the steps of one of the art museums waiting on a friend who was two hours late. A guy ended up sitting next to me and we chatted about how both of our friends were hours late. It was my first trip to NYC so he was telling me places to see and stuff like that. Then he said, "Manhattan is an island and it's not as big as you think. I run into the same people all the time." That was a Thursday, Sunday night, we were backstage after a Broadway show and when we left, I pushed open the door and almost hit the person walking by. It was the same guy from the art museum. We both looked surprised to see each other and then he said, "I told you, it's just an island!" and walked away.
Working in a call centre as a sales rep… literally phoning every in a town pulling pages from a phone book… called a radio station expecting to get their receptionist and hear, “congratulations, you’re caller number 3. You’ve won tickets to David Bowie’s concert tonight!” Literally going down a list and called at the exact right moment!
back in high school i had a boyfriend. when it came time for his birthday i really wanted to give him a gift. i asked what he wanted and since he knew i didnt have much money, he asked for me to paint a picture of myself and gift him that. i was a decent artist and had supplies at home so i painted my portrait gifted it to him. life went on and eventually we amicably split ways. i moved states away, got an education, got married, had kids etc. one day i went looking for some cheap clothes for work at a thift store and decided to check out their knick knacks. as i was about to leave i saw a small canvas sitting on the bottom shelf and went to get a closer look. it was my painting, with my signature and inscription on the back. i of course bought it and took it home. how strange that states away, years afterwards, it would come find me again. as far as i know he still lives in our hometown, though we havent spoken in years. just odd how small the world is really.
I'm from Germany and went on a round trip through Sweden and Norway by car. On one norwegian camping site we've met a lovely retired couple and made some small talk. They were from a German town where we went on a camping trip just 3 month prior. Turns out the couple lived 300 metres away from the camping grounds we stayed on that last vacation. but even better: we talked more and I mentioned that I grew up in a region called Spreewald. Turns out the husband worked in the same city where I went to school, and worked in the same company as my former boyfriends mother. even knew her name. so he said I should say hello for him, as I did. She still had his phone number, so she called him and they had a lovely chat. I guess that little encounter made 3 people quite happy 😊
Travelled from a small place near Manchester, England to Switzerland to walk a glacier and do some crevasse research whilst we were up there. The road to the base of the glacier walk was one way for an hour, bit of a break then one way for the next hour, it was a very quiet and remote area. Decided to have a pre-expedition schnapps as a lucky toast, there’s a tiny bar / café at the parking area, we wander in and one of our group, Phil, heads to the bar, and casually says ‘don’t I know you from somewhere?’ to the woman behind the bar, we all throw a bit of abuse his way for the corny chat up line but are stopped in our tracks, she responds by telling us all that she used to work behind the bar in one of our local pubs, The Kenilworth, in Cheadle Hulme, and she recognised us. Fair play to Phil, he did know her from somewhere!
Was in NYC for my brothers wedding, at the time I was living in a small town in the Welsh valleys, Abertillery, end up meeting this artist who painted pictures that just looked like a mass of colours, turns out they were pictures of Abertillery, taken from a moving car. Never understood why he’d had to go all that way to get blurry photos!
I love these stories! Mine was when my dad passed. I called the company that he had burial insurance through. The lady who answered recognized my name after I told her my dad's name. Turns out I knew her when I was little and she went to high school with my dad. She totally took care of everything from across the country and she's such an awesome lady! Thx you Cathy!
Husband is from South Africa and now lives in the UK- when his son went to nursery he became friends with twin boys- didn't do the nursery runs as was divorced from his first wife by this point- had to pick his son up from the twins birthday party and turns out the dad was his classmate was in the same secondary class as him back in South Africa
Back in the 70s, when I was a kid, my family and I would spend our summer holiday in a little seaside town in Scotland called North Berwick. We stayed in holiday cottages that had been farm workers homes in pre-mechanisation days. The extended family in the next house were a brother, sister, their respective spouses, and three kids of more or less my age. Naturally we palled around together, getting up to mischief, and I was always sad when the holiday ended, and we all went our separate ways until next year. So imagine my shock and surprise, when one year, a couple of months after the holidays, I spotted my three playmates on *my* street in *my* town. It turned out they and their parents were visiting their grandmother - who lived next door to my family.
There is something in a our family. Whenever any of us travel, we always run into people we know despite the miles & the years. The funniest is I went to a charity event in Hawaii featuring the NFL Pro-Bowl players. I was in the Army & in uniform. A buddy of mine I knew from back home in NEPA recognized me first. We was one of the NFL players. It was about 15 years after I last saw him. He used to brag about meeting me there more than I bragged about running into him.
I was living in Alaska and planning to visit my uncle in New York City; a friend told me I should look up her ex-boyfriend who was a musician in Greenwich village. My uncle picked me up at the airport and before going home stopped at his favorite pub where he introduced me to the bartender, who asked what I had planned while I was there. I mentioned I needed to look up this musician in Greenwich village, and he says oh yeah he's a friend of mine I'll take you to go see him. I had been in New York for less than half an hour and the first person I was introduced to knew this guy I was supposed to look up whose ex-girlfriend I knew in Alaska.
I live in Tampa Florida and sitting in a restaurant at the bar and began talking to this guy. He was a marketing rep for a duck processing company. I asked where it was and he said in Indiana (State in USA) and I asked if the owner was so and so? He said he was, he was his boss. Told him he was my college roommate for the only semester I attended Purdue University, 40 years ago. Fast forward 3 years later and I am a cashier and someone bought a frozen duck. I look down and it is from my roommates company!
I have a few, but here are the main ones: my parents both grew up in Brooklyn, but in different neighborhoods. Both were baptized in South Congregational Church, Dad's mother and uncle knew Mom's father, but Mom and Dad never met...until they were both going to a seminary in Bangor, ME, hundreds of miles away. When I was a kid, we moved around a lot, but always in Maine and upstate New York. In my 30s I went off to a technical school in Minnesota. I met a nice girl from Florida who was also taking my course, and we started dating. A few months after graduation, we got engaged. Our birthdays were exactly six months apart, but that's not a big coincidence. The fact that, before her family moved to Florida, my then fiancee had been born in the same hospital as my father--Methodist, in Park Slope--was interesting. Then our families got together before our wedding, and my mother and my fiancee's aunt realized that the aunt's cousins had lived on the same block in Brooklyn as my mother in the 1940s-50s
9 years ago this summer, I was looking to get a different car because I was having alot of problems with the car I had. I learned that the only way to get a different car would be to get a brand new one because I still owed on the car I had. So that's what I did. My 1st and so far, only brand new car. 2 years later, I moved away to CA. Some friends helped make the 2 day drive there in my car. I ended up losing the car to a repo a couple of months after moving there cause I had just caught up on payments after falling behind before moving away and I had fallen behind on payments again because it was hard to find a job in the area I moved to. I was so bummed cause now, I had to share a vehicle w/a housemate. I ended up driving us to the town We worked in and they took the car while I just hung out at a coffee shop until I had to go to work.Well, fast-forward to 2020 and the pandemic happens. I get furloughed from my job and decide to move back home that summer. I really liked that particular car I had
Apparently, there's a character limit on comments. Anyways, I really liked the car that I had when I moved to CA. So I was looking for another one like it. A little over a year after moving back home, I was looking at cars online and I saw a twin of that car at a dealership 30-40 minutes away. Without hesitation, I made an appt to at least look at it. It had some rear quarter panel damage, but other than that, it was solid w/a clean title. It worked out for me to get that car and I still have it now!! As a bonus, the previous owner of this car had a remote start system installed. First car I've ever had with remote start
Load More Replies... This one's a little awkward. My Dad was a very friendly guy who could strike up a conversation with anyone. He worked at the local hospital for more than 30 years. He was delivering medication from the pharmacy to some patients and got to talking to a lady working as a traveling nurse. She mentioned she previously lived in the town next to the hospital. My Dad said "oh, my daughter and her husband just bought a house there on Street X." A few more questions and they realized that we had purchased the home that she shared with her family before they were foreclosed upon. They had added on a first floor laundry room and second floor; so the housing market crisis of 2009 meant that we got quite the bargain! Still there nearly 15 years later. Last thing I heard about the family was seeing their son's name in the paper for allegedly molesting a child.
My family had three small coincidences happen when we moved not long ago. First one- my mum had dated a guy who went to her church while in high school but lost touch after the broke up and each moved away and had their own families. We had heard about him a bit, because he became an AFL player and thought it was funny they used to date. Anyway, last we had heard he was living in Queensland, while we still lived in Victoria. My mum moved from Melbourne to a small town and hour and a half away three years ago. I visited her not long after she moved, and we went for dinner in a pub in another nearby town. While we were there, she see's her ex boyfriend and the get talking about how random it was to meet there. Turns out he lives in another nearby town and was guest DJ at one of the pubs there! Second one- My stepdad joined a blues and roots band when they moved and one of the guys in this band is married to a woman he used to work with, who also used to work with him at a special...
...school where they used to live. (Also where my brothers used to attend, which is how he met my mum). Thirdly- about 12 months after my mum moved house, I also moved, about 15 minutes away from her. I didn't know anyone in town (except my dad, who lives with me) but I reached out to a friend on Facebook, because last I had heard, she was living in a town nearby. This is a friend who I used to live a few streets away from when I started school and she was my best friend for about a decade, before we lost touch. She said she actually had moved to the town I was in and we decided to catch up. I put her address in my gps, and it turns out we were once again living only a few streets away!
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Craziest thing I've had happen to me was a random patient who was checking out at the front desk I work at. I have a Michigan flag on the wall behind me (my favorite sports team). They asked me if I was from there, and I said "yup, born and raised in Flint!" So they asked, "hey did you go to (name of my high school)?" I was like.... do I know you? How did you pull that out of your a*s? Turns out their siblings went to my high school about 20 years before I did. We have no other connections. They just know that school. No one knows that school, it's not particularly big or notable for any reason. I think about that lady all the time. Totally threw me off!
Top Secret To Win The Lottery With The Help Of A Magic Lottery spell caster called Dr Emmanuel.......I saw testimonies online on how Dr Emmanuel helped a lot of people in winning huge amounts in the lottery, so I decided to contact him for winning numbers. I contacted this man and he did a spell and he gave me the winning lottery numbers to play. Believe me when the draws were out I was among the winners. I won $70 million jackpot. I have confirmed Dr Emmanuel and he is real and guaranteed. Now I am a living testimony of the good works of Dr Emmanuel, a gifted man with great powers, it is my secret but I decided to make the world known too. It might be a help to anyone who is interested. My comment might look funny to you but it is the truth and I promise you that it will not be funny when you win and share a testimony with others. This is a secret to win the lottery so I advise you to do the same. It’s not everybody that is naturally lucky, if you have problems in winning the lotter
First day on campus, I was dismayed to realize I had ended up on the wrong side of a long, long hedge. Being very skinny and outdoorsy, I decided to cut through it, but it was slightly more difficult than I first estimated. Reaching the other side, feeling like I had climbed through a jungle, I was now disheveled and came to a very well-dressed man on the other side. Deflecting my awkardness I joked, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" (From a legendary story of David Livingstone meeting Dr Henry Stanley in the depth of the African jungle.) The man was arriving on campus to be announced as the new university president. And his name just happened to be Dr Livingston. (No, we didn't get married; that would've been weird.)
Over 20 years ago, I rode my small V50 Moto Guzzi in southern Germany when all of a sudden my speedometer drive broke... the drive was part of the hub of the front wheel, not the best solution.... I was just in front of a car dealership and I asked them for a tool to remove the wire.... the owner told me "Oh in the past, my father used to sell this brand of motorcycles, I wonder...." and yes, he found the spare part for a almost 20 year old italian motorbike which was only for 2 years in production. He sold it to me for the price on the price tag...
A workmate of mine visits Malta regularly to see family there. On one trip she and her family decided to try a little cafe for lunch, and the owner came out to chat and discovered my workmate lived in Melbourne. "Oh you'll know my cousin" he said. "Probably not, Melbourne is a big place" says my workmate. The cafe owner told her his cousins name and my workmate had to say "Ah. Yes. he's my hairdresser" haha. Melbourne not that big after all.
In 2017 I was on a small boat taking a ride from Marahau, a small settlement near Nelson in New Zealand to a trail head. I was to run back the 20 miles or so through the Abel Tasman National Park. On the boat I got talking to a fellow Brit. Anyway fast forward about a year and I was on an underground train on the Bakerloo Line in London and a guy opposite me was staring at me. Finally he came over and it was the very same guy I had been talking to that day in New Zealand.
I was in NYC in 1999. Was sitting on the steps of one of the art museums waiting on a friend who was two hours late. A guy ended up sitting next to me and we chatted about how both of our friends were hours late. It was my first trip to NYC so he was telling me places to see and stuff like that. Then he said, "Manhattan is an island and it's not as big as you think. I run into the same people all the time." That was a Thursday, Sunday night, we were backstage after a Broadway show and when we left, I pushed open the door and almost hit the person walking by. It was the same guy from the art museum. We both looked surprised to see each other and then he said, "I told you, it's just an island!" and walked away.
Working in a call centre as a sales rep… literally phoning every in a town pulling pages from a phone book… called a radio station expecting to get their receptionist and hear, “congratulations, you’re caller number 3. You’ve won tickets to David Bowie’s concert tonight!” Literally going down a list and called at the exact right moment!
back in high school i had a boyfriend. when it came time for his birthday i really wanted to give him a gift. i asked what he wanted and since he knew i didnt have much money, he asked for me to paint a picture of myself and gift him that. i was a decent artist and had supplies at home so i painted my portrait gifted it to him. life went on and eventually we amicably split ways. i moved states away, got an education, got married, had kids etc. one day i went looking for some cheap clothes for work at a thift store and decided to check out their knick knacks. as i was about to leave i saw a small canvas sitting on the bottom shelf and went to get a closer look. it was my painting, with my signature and inscription on the back. i of course bought it and took it home. how strange that states away, years afterwards, it would come find me again. as far as i know he still lives in our hometown, though we havent spoken in years. just odd how small the world is really.
I'm from Germany and went on a round trip through Sweden and Norway by car. On one norwegian camping site we've met a lovely retired couple and made some small talk. They were from a German town where we went on a camping trip just 3 month prior. Turns out the couple lived 300 metres away from the camping grounds we stayed on that last vacation. but even better: we talked more and I mentioned that I grew up in a region called Spreewald. Turns out the husband worked in the same city where I went to school, and worked in the same company as my former boyfriends mother. even knew her name. so he said I should say hello for him, as I did. She still had his phone number, so she called him and they had a lovely chat. I guess that little encounter made 3 people quite happy 😊
Travelled from a small place near Manchester, England to Switzerland to walk a glacier and do some crevasse research whilst we were up there. The road to the base of the glacier walk was one way for an hour, bit of a break then one way for the next hour, it was a very quiet and remote area. Decided to have a pre-expedition schnapps as a lucky toast, there’s a tiny bar / café at the parking area, we wander in and one of our group, Phil, heads to the bar, and casually says ‘don’t I know you from somewhere?’ to the woman behind the bar, we all throw a bit of abuse his way for the corny chat up line but are stopped in our tracks, she responds by telling us all that she used to work behind the bar in one of our local pubs, The Kenilworth, in Cheadle Hulme, and she recognised us. Fair play to Phil, he did know her from somewhere!
Was in NYC for my brothers wedding, at the time I was living in a small town in the Welsh valleys, Abertillery, end up meeting this artist who painted pictures that just looked like a mass of colours, turns out they were pictures of Abertillery, taken from a moving car. Never understood why he’d had to go all that way to get blurry photos!
I love these stories! Mine was when my dad passed. I called the company that he had burial insurance through. The lady who answered recognized my name after I told her my dad's name. Turns out I knew her when I was little and she went to high school with my dad. She totally took care of everything from across the country and she's such an awesome lady! Thx you Cathy!
Husband is from South Africa and now lives in the UK- when his son went to nursery he became friends with twin boys- didn't do the nursery runs as was divorced from his first wife by this point- had to pick his son up from the twins birthday party and turns out the dad was his classmate was in the same secondary class as him back in South Africa
Back in the 70s, when I was a kid, my family and I would spend our summer holiday in a little seaside town in Scotland called North Berwick. We stayed in holiday cottages that had been farm workers homes in pre-mechanisation days. The extended family in the next house were a brother, sister, their respective spouses, and three kids of more or less my age. Naturally we palled around together, getting up to mischief, and I was always sad when the holiday ended, and we all went our separate ways until next year. So imagine my shock and surprise, when one year, a couple of months after the holidays, I spotted my three playmates on *my* street in *my* town. It turned out they and their parents were visiting their grandmother - who lived next door to my family.
There is something in a our family. Whenever any of us travel, we always run into people we know despite the miles & the years. The funniest is I went to a charity event in Hawaii featuring the NFL Pro-Bowl players. I was in the Army & in uniform. A buddy of mine I knew from back home in NEPA recognized me first. We was one of the NFL players. It was about 15 years after I last saw him. He used to brag about meeting me there more than I bragged about running into him.
I was living in Alaska and planning to visit my uncle in New York City; a friend told me I should look up her ex-boyfriend who was a musician in Greenwich village. My uncle picked me up at the airport and before going home stopped at his favorite pub where he introduced me to the bartender, who asked what I had planned while I was there. I mentioned I needed to look up this musician in Greenwich village, and he says oh yeah he's a friend of mine I'll take you to go see him. I had been in New York for less than half an hour and the first person I was introduced to knew this guy I was supposed to look up whose ex-girlfriend I knew in Alaska.
I live in Tampa Florida and sitting in a restaurant at the bar and began talking to this guy. He was a marketing rep for a duck processing company. I asked where it was and he said in Indiana (State in USA) and I asked if the owner was so and so? He said he was, he was his boss. Told him he was my college roommate for the only semester I attended Purdue University, 40 years ago. Fast forward 3 years later and I am a cashier and someone bought a frozen duck. I look down and it is from my roommates company!
I have a few, but here are the main ones: my parents both grew up in Brooklyn, but in different neighborhoods. Both were baptized in South Congregational Church, Dad's mother and uncle knew Mom's father, but Mom and Dad never met...until they were both going to a seminary in Bangor, ME, hundreds of miles away. When I was a kid, we moved around a lot, but always in Maine and upstate New York. In my 30s I went off to a technical school in Minnesota. I met a nice girl from Florida who was also taking my course, and we started dating. A few months after graduation, we got engaged. Our birthdays were exactly six months apart, but that's not a big coincidence. The fact that, before her family moved to Florida, my then fiancee had been born in the same hospital as my father--Methodist, in Park Slope--was interesting. Then our families got together before our wedding, and my mother and my fiancee's aunt realized that the aunt's cousins had lived on the same block in Brooklyn as my mother in the 1940s-50s
9 years ago this summer, I was looking to get a different car because I was having alot of problems with the car I had. I learned that the only way to get a different car would be to get a brand new one because I still owed on the car I had. So that's what I did. My 1st and so far, only brand new car. 2 years later, I moved away to CA. Some friends helped make the 2 day drive there in my car. I ended up losing the car to a repo a couple of months after moving there cause I had just caught up on payments after falling behind before moving away and I had fallen behind on payments again because it was hard to find a job in the area I moved to. I was so bummed cause now, I had to share a vehicle w/a housemate. I ended up driving us to the town We worked in and they took the car while I just hung out at a coffee shop until I had to go to work.Well, fast-forward to 2020 and the pandemic happens. I get furloughed from my job and decide to move back home that summer. I really liked that particular car I had
Apparently, there's a character limit on comments. Anyways, I really liked the car that I had when I moved to CA. So I was looking for another one like it. A little over a year after moving back home, I was looking at cars online and I saw a twin of that car at a dealership 30-40 minutes away. Without hesitation, I made an appt to at least look at it. It had some rear quarter panel damage, but other than that, it was solid w/a clean title. It worked out for me to get that car and I still have it now!! As a bonus, the previous owner of this car had a remote start system installed. First car I've ever had with remote start
Load More Replies... This one's a little awkward. My Dad was a very friendly guy who could strike up a conversation with anyone. He worked at the local hospital for more than 30 years. He was delivering medication from the pharmacy to some patients and got to talking to a lady working as a traveling nurse. She mentioned she previously lived in the town next to the hospital. My Dad said "oh, my daughter and her husband just bought a house there on Street X." A few more questions and they realized that we had purchased the home that she shared with her family before they were foreclosed upon. They had added on a first floor laundry room and second floor; so the housing market crisis of 2009 meant that we got quite the bargain! Still there nearly 15 years later. Last thing I heard about the family was seeing their son's name in the paper for allegedly molesting a child.
My family had three small coincidences happen when we moved not long ago. First one- my mum had dated a guy who went to her church while in high school but lost touch after the broke up and each moved away and had their own families. We had heard about him a bit, because he became an AFL player and thought it was funny they used to date. Anyway, last we had heard he was living in Queensland, while we still lived in Victoria. My mum moved from Melbourne to a small town and hour and a half away three years ago. I visited her not long after she moved, and we went for dinner in a pub in another nearby town. While we were there, she see's her ex boyfriend and the get talking about how random it was to meet there. Turns out he lives in another nearby town and was guest DJ at one of the pubs there! Second one- My stepdad joined a blues and roots band when they moved and one of the guys in this band is married to a woman he used to work with, who also used to work with him at a special...
...school where they used to live. (Also where my brothers used to attend, which is how he met my mum). Thirdly- about 12 months after my mum moved house, I also moved, about 15 minutes away from her. I didn't know anyone in town (except my dad, who lives with me) but I reached out to a friend on Facebook, because last I had heard, she was living in a town nearby. This is a friend who I used to live a few streets away from when I started school and she was my best friend for about a decade, before we lost touch. She said she actually had moved to the town I was in and we decided to catch up. I put her address in my gps, and it turns out we were once again living only a few streets away!
Load More Replies... Craziest thing I've had happen to me was a random patient who was checking out at the front desk I work at. I have a Michigan flag on the wall behind me (my favorite sports team). They asked me if I was from there, and I said "yup, born and raised in Flint!" So they asked, "hey did you go to (name of my high school)?" I was like.... do I know you? How did you pull that out of your a*s? Turns out their siblings went to my high school about 20 years before I did. We have no other connections. They just know that school. No one knows that school, it's not particularly big or notable for any reason. I think about that lady all the time. Totally threw me off!
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