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.

I'm similar to this. I can randomly start thinking about people I haven't seen for 20+ years, sometimes people I worked with. I then see them randomly within the next week. It's happened so many times it freaks me out a bit!

Going out in the car with my DH one day, we drove past a big house with a long gated driveway. I grew up very close by and in the 30 years I lived there I never ever saw a car go in or out of the gates. I used to pass it twice a day. I mentioned this to DH as we passed.

A few hours later, on our way home, we passed it again and sure enough a car was coming out of the gates. We were astonished and convinced I made it happen by saying it that morning

A few weeks ago we bought a new appliance made by Miele. We didn't know how to pronounce Miele. We'd never heard anyone say it. Last night we saw it advertised on TV (never seen an ad for this brand before!) Turns out I was pronouncing it right, DH wasn't

Two nights ago I was talking to a family member about George III and how in those days they thought he was mad/had periods of insanity. We were discussing it because I'd read about it in a book. Then last night I put the TV on and the film The Madness of King George was on!

My SS met and married a girl when in his mid 30s, turns out they went to primary school together and were sat next to each other in the school photo, they now have this photo on the wall at home

My closest friend and I, while living in London in our late 20s, met our husbands in very different places - me at a house party for a different friend in Oxford, and she met her future husband online a few weeks later.

Turned out that our husbands knew each other - grew up in the same village and went to the same schools. And more strangely, have the same birthdate (just a year apart). Hadn't seen each other after each went away to Uni/work.

We now (both couples) all live back in the area the two husbands came from.

For many years I was the main carer for my aunt and uncle. I used to do everything for them, as they didn't have a family of their own. My aunt was diagnosed with terminal asbestos related cancer, my uncle then had to move in to a home as his dementia became so bad and he couldn't walk. Times were tough...
My aunt then died the day before my birthday in 2016, then a year later my uncle died the day after my birthday in 2017.

How did you know it was her?

Not super exciting, but...

I had travelled around 4 hours with DC, so they could compete in a sporting event. I got chatting to the lady sitting next to me who lived nearby, and asked where I lived. I said the vague geographical location. She asked whereabouts exactly, as her daughter lived in that region. I said my village. She said "My daughter lives there too! Do you know her, her name is ...?"

Yep, she's my best friend!

I'm not saying as I've told so many people in real life!

Don't have any coincidences that are really fascinating but I know 2 different people who lived in my home before me (at different times). Knew them both before moving in and only found out afterwards. One did the same job as me but at a different company (it isn't a common job either!)

@GettingStuffed so you visited a family member and an hour later, some other family visited? What's the coincidence? Sorry to be dense!

Oh another...

School holidays a few years ago, and I promised my DDs we would go out and have a go on the pedalos in a nearby park. Half of which are red dragons; the other half white swans (you can probably work out where that might be!) anyway, in the car the DDs were arguing about which they'd prefer and couldn't decide. I switched on the radio, and the song "Ride a White Swan" by TRex came on!

So we did.

My parents once went on their holidays
say my parents are called jane and Peter Appleby (I’ve changed all names)
a couple they met had the same name!
not only that but their kids (girl and 3 boys) had the same names as myself and my brothers-down to our middle names-and mine is unusual (I have twin brothers-they didn’t have twins but the same names)
both my parents and this other couple did the same jobs,just with different companies
The street where my parents live is named after a village a few miles down the road-this other family lived in the village and both families had the same house number
their phone numbers had the same numbers just in a different order
i was pregnant at the time with a girl-their dd was also expecting a girl-we had the same due date
my parents stayed in touch via phone and letter-we both named our dds the same names,gave birth on the same day,same birth weight,had the same prams and both babies had a shock of dark hair
oh and we all share the same birthday months as our namesakes
27 years on,they are still in touch and meet every Christmas
if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,I wouldn’t have believed it

another one is I used to live up north and my partner down south
he moved to the midlands to marry a woman,but divorced her years later-met me and I moved down to be with him
i was at work one day,when I got talking to a couple and it turned out,that not only did they used to live not far from my partners family-they knew them-my fil who was a builder did a lot of work for them
They’d moved to the midlands as it’s cheaper housing-and lost touch with my in-laws
it amazed me that not only did they know my in-laws,but they’d moved to within a few miles of where we live now and wandered into the place I worked (they’d never eaten fast food before-but thought they’d give it a go) but met me too
i did have to pass on the sad news my fil had passed-they rang my mil to say how sorry they where and ended up going to see her this Christmas-she was delighted

odd how life works

My best friend from school in a village in Yorkshire, many years later became best friends with someone in London she met in a pub there, who was someone I was friends with on a random internet forum. Neither knew anything about the other before that!

Oh and my direct neighbours now, lived a few doors down in a town 1 hour away where we lived before 🤯

We went on holiday to Tunisia and rented a car and went to different places every day. We went to a pretty remote place called El Djem, where there is a Colosseum bigger than the one in Rome.

Afterwards, we sat in a café and another European couple sat next to us. This was really out of the way and they were the only non-locals we'd seen there. We heard Geordie accents, so I said,

"Hiya - where yous from?"

"Oh, XY area," "Really? Us too? We're on YZ Terrace, next to the Metro."

"No shit! We live on PQ Place!" Right across the main road from us, they'd been there for years and none of us recognised the others.

We had a bed delivered and it came from near Wigan. When I was signing the paperwork, I noticed the man's surname and mentioned that it was my Nan's maiden name and that she was from a village near Wigan. He asked if she had a brothers called Jack, Ernie and Norman and sisters called Edie and Olive. Olive was his mother!

We didn't stay in touch.

Back in the seventies I dated a guy with the same first and middle name as my brother. Weirdly, my brother was seeing a girl with the same first and middle name as me!

I once got chatting to someone at a funeral. It turned out that they lived in the house I grew up in, up until the age of five.

I was chatting to someone that works at the same company, different department and we've weirdly led parallel lives.
She grew up round the corner from me (in a different city to where we both work).
She went to the same primary school and secondary school, but was in a different year to me as she's 4 years older.
When she was 16 she dated my best friend's (at the time) brother.
She worked on the same street as I did in the city centre of our home town, at around the same time in 2002/2003.
We both ended up working for the same company (different city) in different departments about 15 years ago and we're both still here.
She currently lives on a road (in a third separate town altogether) which is the same road I used to live on from 2005-07.

About 20 years ago I went to Brighton for a few days with my boyfriend at the time. We were down on the beach when I heard someone shout my name.

It was my niece who was about 7 at the time. She was on holiday with her Dad, staying in Eastbourne but had come to Brighton for the day.

OH's great grandparent used to live at 10 Rillington Place in London.

In my first teaching job I was sat in a large group in the staff room one day. Hadn't been there long and knew only a few people in the group. A maths teacher says that thing about how in a group of X number there's an Y% chance of having two or more people with the same birthday (X is a fairly low number, Y is a fairly high one). I said I'd never met anyone in real life who shared my birthday and shrugged, saying the date. Supply teacher next to me looks up from the metro he was reading and says it's his birthday too. I didn't believe him until he got out his driving license!

I work with 15 people. Two of them share their birthday, 20 years apart. Unfortunately their big 30 and 50 birthdays were during lock down! That day is also another colleagues mums birthday, another colleagues sons birthday and my own grandads birthday.
That day is actually today!

I went to put petrol in my car and I always try and get it to stop on a whole number. I tried to stop it at £40 but it went a bit over and stopped on £40.10. When I was paying for my fuel in the petrol station I picked up some other items and they came to £5 so I paid £45.10 in total. As I was getting my purse out I noticed I had a lottery ticket in there so asked the cashier to check whether I'd won anything and I had......the amount I'd won was exactly £45.10

I love mine and have told on here before.

When my 2nd DD (now 14!!) was born we were fairly skint and so I cherished all her lovely new born things, some gifted and a few bits I managed to save up for over the pregnancy. Included in this was a gorgeous stripey blanket from Mamas & Papas (think it was from a range called Gingerbread.)

I absolutely loved that blanket and used when DD was in her her pram until one day DH who was in the navy deployed, it was a really horrible day and I’d wrapped DD1 and 2 in the double buggy to watch his boat leave the base and somewhere along the way we lost the blanket and despite tracing our steps we never found.

I remember being a hormonal mess that night, two babies, husband away and lost something that was really precious to me.

Skip forward 4 years and I had just had my 3rd DD, I was browsing the local selling pages one afternoon and I seen another gingerbread blanket advertised, I was delighted and thought I would buy for the memory box and also thought my 2nd DD would still like.

The women said she would drop off and when she arrived we had a bit of a chat and I said how pleased I was to find another blanket and told her the story about how we had lost the 1st one and how sad I was.

She started laughing and said

“Do you want to know how I came about finding this blanket

One rainy day 4 years ago, I found it at the water front in the gutter under a parked car and I picked it up and took it home as knew someone would be missing it, it’s been washed, folded, and ready for its owner to pick up ever since, I asked about and even left a note on the car it was underneath but no one ever came for it”

The lady was moving house and thought the baby that had been used for was probably outgrown so advertised for someone else to get some use out of it…

Which we absolutely did and it’s now safely packed away for when it’s needed again.

My elderly aunty needed to go into a nursing home following a fall which left her with a broken hip and a traumatic brain injury. The hospital social worker in Town E, where my aunty lived, gave me the name and number of a nursing home in Town R - about 15 miles away - to go and look at. It was the perfect place for her and I got the ball rolling for her admission there.

Aunty's equally elderly next-door neighbour, Beryl, who'd lived in and around Town E all her life, rang me up to ask me for the address of the nursing home, so that she could go and visit her there. "It's just out of the town centre," I said. "You go past the leisure centre, then over a railway bridge with a little post office on your left, then turn left..."

And Beryl finished the sentence for me, "...onto Raymond Road and it's at the very top of your hill on the right, in a converted 1900s hospital building?"

"That's right, Beryl - how did you know?" I asked.

"When I was 12 years old in 1938 I had glandular fever and I spent a year on a convalescent ward in Town R," said Beryl, "In that hospital building."

I bumped into my headmaster at school on a week holiday in the middle of Venice in Italy 😂