What is the strangest coincidence you’ve had?

[Yoloohno]

Mine was I met someone on holiday in place A and had conversations several times during the week.

Fast forward 6 months and I got talking to someone on another holiday in place b and thought I know them but wasn’t sure where from, but not from that holiday or home but it turns out it was from holiday A.

My husband has a twin brother. His twin’s wife had the same maiden name as me.

I was in a bar in a fairly off the beaten track village in Mexico. Went to get a drink and the person serving was a guy who used to work in my old local, he was travelling over there and got a job for a few weeks.

Also, I have only ever seen an old boss of mine 3 times after leaving the company 20 years ago, despite not living that far apart. All 3 times were at airports!

DH had a (private) hospital appointment a few weeks ago, the day after his birthday, and had a personal male nurse throughout his day surgery.

Not only did his nurse share his birthday, they had been born on exactly the same date, at the same hospital, within an hour of each other!

I was working in Romania for a month or so years ago. The company had paid for the stay at a lovely 5 star hotel; the senior receptionist had been trained up in the UK by my hotel manager Dad.

I made friends with a lady who I used to buy lots from each month from Etsy. She lives 400 miles from me. She got a new pup, from a different breeder to my 3 year old (not an uncommon breed), her dog & mine are cousins!

I went to the same school as my boss, in a totally different county to the one we live in now - we worked it out when we both joined the same reunion page. She's older than me, we were there together for 2 years

The age gap between me and DH, my mum and my dad, and my two sons is almost identical within a few days - all 5 years 1 month. That's weird!

Oh gosh - a lot things associated with being in the same small city where I grew up. As it’s a university city and I have connections to both town and gown elements I sometimes find I have multiple connections to people I only just met via friends etc.

The best coincidence like this was when we were waiting for a small ferry in Mevagissy in Cornwall and 3 ex colleagues were also in the queue, one was a colleague who was pregnant at the same time as I was. We’d lost touch because she fell out with our line manager and left in a hough.

My favourite coincidence is not related to this though. My DS has a German exchange through school. His exchange partner is named Maxi (short for Maximilian), 40 years ago my exchange partner was Maxi (short for Maximiliane).

I worked for a company for about a decade and left because I was moving abroad. When I came back I checked with my old boss to see if there was a vacancy with him, but there wasn't so I got a job somewhere else. I worked in the new job for about a year when they decided that they wanted me to be full-time, which didn't suit me so I resigned but agreed to keep working (part-time) until they found a replacement. My new boss told me they'd offered the job to someone and the same day my old boss phoned me to see if I would still like to go back to work with him. It turned out that my replacement at my old job had accepted the position that I'd just resigned from, so we swapped jobs.

I frequently wake up with a song in my head, having not heard it for YEARS, and then it comes on the radio that day.

Last week I dreamed that I cut my leg shaving and lost a contact lens. What two things do you think happened that very next day?!

I was traveling one summer and met a Danish girl. We didn't stay in contact afterwards. Almost exactly two years later I bumped into her in a bar in Indonesia. Does that count?

Walking along Hammersmith bridge ran into a close friend from high school in our home country.

Living rurally, friends with neighbours as kids at same school. Asked for drinks one afternoon, they had family friends pop over as travelling through. Had moved to my home country.
Started chatting on where they lived. Worked out they had been living in the same small village half way between big cities and used to drive the local school bus, knew our house. Crazy

Sold fitness equipment on gumtree and it was my old boss from 20 years before that came to pick it up. Ordered a taxi and when the taxi came he was driving my old car that I traded in at a large showroom 3 years before.

Living back in home country. Parent from school travelling overseas, ran into someone we knew from the uk because the talked about running and how a good friend of his was a runner and said his name. Random chat to random stranger and crazy link. Took a photo and sent it to us.
Both just tourists not there for a running event. Weird

Years ago when I was a student I walked past a phone box in our street at a random time and it was ringing. I went in and picked it up out of curiosity, and it was my brother! I'd given him the phone number for call back purposes and he thought it was my home number.

When I was at uni many years ago, I went to view a flat for the next academic year. Kept on ringing the bell, no answer. About to give up, when the occupier of another flat opened the door to leave the house. It was someone I had been at school with about 5 years previously - didn't even know she was in the same city, which was a couple of hours' drive from our hometown.

Another one I like is this little circular one. A friend and colleague of my husband asked if I wanted to see a film together. She introduced me to a visiting scholar from Texas. At this time she was renting a house around the corner from us whilst trying to buy a house.

Spool forward several years… Texas based scholar has relocated to UK following death of her husband. She and I go house hunting, she’s renting around the corner from us and says let’s meet there to begin house hunting. It’s the same rented house!

When I was a teenager in London I split up from my first proper boyfriend because he got deeply involved with the drug scene. The last I heard of him he'd left his parents and gone to live in some filthy squat with a load of junkies and addicts. He was 18.

I'd think of him from time to time, and worry what became of him. I felt sad that the drugs may have killed him, or he may have ended up in prison. After about 5 years I had my own transport and one day I spontaneously drove to his parents house. I was terrified of hearing the worst, but I had to know. Other people lived there, who had never heard of them. Every time a new telephone directory was issued I'd look up his and his parents but they were never listed.

He, his parents and me and my parents were all lifelong Londoners. When I was 29 I left London, and over the next decades I lived in four different towns. Every so often I would think about him, for example meeting someone with his first or surname, and start wondering again what happened to him. But there was absolutely no way of finding out.

Eventually I settled in the house and town I live in now. When I had been here for about 20 years I joined Facebook, and one of the first things I did was searched for him, to no avail. I also tried a site called Friends Reunited. He wasn't on it. Then the telephone directories went online and I tried again to find his parents or him. Nowt. I wasn't obsessed with him, it was just when something reminded me of him, maybe 4 or 5 times a year, I'd rack my brains trying to think of a way to find out if he was dead or alive. In between I'd forget about him. Maybe I was always looking for "closure"?

Then one day I had a brainwave! He'd had a little brother, who was a toddler when he and I were together. This brother had an unsual first name, plus being so much younger, maybe HE was on Facebook?

He was!

OMG I was so shocked to see his name and photo and so frightened to ask him The Question: was his big brother alive? I always felt in my gut that he had died, and wanted to know when and how, so that I could forget him once and for all. I could hardly get my fingers to type him a message. I was also aware I could be stirring up a painful memory. If my ex had died, it was likely when his little brother was quite young.

Now (FINALLY) is where the amazing coincidence comes in. Not only was he still alive (phew!) but he had been living half a mile away from me for the last 20 years. In fact his house overlooked the car park of a supermarket I had used frequently for two decades.

Whilst he was caught up with drugs his father retired from work and decided to move to the seaside with his much younger 2nd wife and 5 year old son. They moved to Hastings, chosen for its cheap house prices and seaside. They had no connections with Hastings whatsoever. Before they moved they staged an intervention, forcibly took his older son from the druggie squat, took him to Hastings and broke his addiction. In time he built a business and bought a house of his own, overlooking a supermarket.

Meanwhile I lived in four different towns ending up (because I moved to live with a man with whom I was in a long distance relationship) in Hastings. I, too, had no previous connection with this town.

Reader, I met up with my ex. By that time I was single again and so was he. We met after not seeing one another for 45 years. Imagine that! We chatted for hours about the 3 years we were together, the first love and first lover for both of us.

Sadly he turned out to be the worst misogynist I have ever met in my whole life, so we never met again.

On a cruise with a friend, we get chatting to an older guy who is travelling alone and also British. Turns out he used to drive the bus on the line my friend took every day as a kid

Ah this has reminded me of something similar that happened to us. We were going to a wedding and DH bought a new tie for it. Wedding was in my home town so we were staying with my DPs, it had recently been DHs birthday and when we arrived they gave him an identical tie as a present. This was especially good as DH then realised he’d forgotten to pack the one he’d bought previously.
During the wedding reception DH removes his jacket and tie as it’s a hot evening, and hangs them on the back of his chair. Later when we’re ready to leave, the tie has completely disappeared! Never found by venue or bride’s family who helped clear up. Of course he had the one at home when we got back - it was like there was only ever one tie.

That is amazing 😳

Moved to another European country straight after uni and have lived here ever since. Went on holiday to Thailand one year; in a small bar one night I bumped into a lad I hadn't seen since we were in the same class at school in the UK 10 years before.

I live in a large capital city in mainland Europe and my children were born and brought up here. When my daughter was at primary school I got talking on the bus to another mum whose son was in the same class. We'd never met before as she usually dropped him off by car. Turned out we're both from the same small town in the UK and her mum lives round the corner from where I grew up. We've been pals ever since.

Flew on holiday in December sat next to a man and his family there and back. Got chatting and turns out his son knows my friend. They went to the same dance school and now teach together in London. Me and this man live 4 hours apart from each other and neither on us live in London.

As a child I had a pen friend in New Zealand. We shared the same first and middle names and our birthdays were only 2 days apart.

We wrote to each other for years but lapsed in our late teens.

40+ years later she got in touch online. I’d lived a very urban life, London, corporate, home a Victorian semi. She’d tried life in a town, hated it, worked in the Australian outback and now lived in a very modern house on a rural hillside. So far quite different.

We shared photos of our houses to find we had the identical rug in our entrance halls.

DH is from a town around fifty miles from where I live, he moved over to be with me. He bumped into a woman in the local corner shop that he used to work closely with in his old town. Turned out she had married a bloke from my town and moved to be with him, and they had just bought house round the corner from us. We invited them round, and it turned out her DH was someone I used to work closely with years ago.

Although I have experienced several stunning coincidence, this is the most stunning.

My dad, who was born in 1922, was in a prisoner of war camp in Nazi Germany when he was 20. He and another lad from his country managed to escape, risking their lives, and then walked for hundreds of miles, taking several weeks, to reach neutral Switzerland, where they were handed over to their country's army.

Through my childhood I heard my dad reminisce about this experience. He would tell the story many times over to family, friends, acquaintances etc. He'd always end by wondering wistfully what ever happened to the lad, who he considered to be his brother because of the shared horror experience and the weeks spent walking through forests, scavenging and trying to to get killed, as well as spending three years together in the army. He'd then start crying. The pair were demobbed in London, entered completely different industries and somehow lost touch in 1945.

Scroll forward to 1977. I started a new job working with people of all ages and ethnic backgrounds. After a few weeks a middle aged man approached me and asked me if my dad's first name was X. It was. And was he from X town/country? Yes he was.

And with that, the man broke down in tears.

Yes, it was the person my Dad had been telling me and everyone about all my life. He had anglicised his name so, even though I knew his name, it was nothing like the name my Dad had told me so many times.

Needless to say, I hooked them up and they both got so drunk that night they ended up being arrested for being D & D in the street, singing folk songs from the old country. My colleague died about 3 months later.

Not very exciting but I used to work for Smyths Toys, at a store in Birmingham.
A new store was opening 50ish miles away in Gloucestershire
My store was very close to the motorway, as was the new store, so for 2 weeks the staff at the new store were brought up to our store for training.
Imagine my surprise on day 1 when I walked into the staffroom and one of the new staff was somebody I'd been to school with.
The weirdest part was.. the school we went to was in Dorset. Nowhere near to either of our stores.