Can we have a thread where we share unlikely but true stories?

[letsgowiththat]

I'll start.

My (non English speaking) DGF received an email (in English) from the solicitor of a man who claimed to be the son of a long lost relative from Africa claiming he was basically of princely status and there was an inheritance waiting for my DGF and his siblings.
So basically like the Nigerian prince scam.

Except it was all true and it was a relative who escaped my DGFs home country as he did not want to be drafted into the war and ended up never contacting anyone again and building a small empire in Africa, getting married (multiple times) and having DCs. He willed a small part of his accounts to my DGFs by then deceased mother who was his cousin and then it got passed down and split between my DGF and his siblings by default. Not life changing money but one of our favourite stories to tell!

The majority of the emails was done through google translate as well

Does anyone have any "sounds like a lie but is true" stories they'd like to share?

[EarringsandLipstick]

@LadyEuphemia

My husband and I grew up 100 miles away from each other and met through friends in my hometown. He’d come down to work, and shared a house with one of my work colleagues.

Fast forward 20 years and I was doing some family tree research and found in 1939, my Nan and her children had been evacuated from hometown to near where my husband is from - about 6 villages away. Totally weird had never heard anything about it as my Mum was born long after the war. So I decided to look up where his family were in 1939.

Turned out his Great Grandfather and teenage Grandfather and the rest of the family weren’t living in DH’s village, they were in the same village as my Grandmother and the kids.

They ran the village post office and shop, so every time my Nan sent a letter home to my Grandad and family, or had to buy supplies she would have to use the shop and interact with my future husband’s family. Such a weird co-incidence, the world really is a small place.

That's a brilliant story. Quite spine-tingling, thinking of both your ancestors interacting, before you were even born, and that you'd ultimately meet & marry, which none of them could know.

[ChristmasFluff]

Oh, and another one that at the time I thought was unique and people would never believe, but I googled it and found a few videos on YouTube.

I drove through the end of a rainbow. I saw the rainbow hitting the motorway, and then I drove through it. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life - the rainbow seemed inside the car as well as outside, and I was driving thinking 'this can't be happening....' and then 'it can't be lasting this long...' - it lasted seconds rather than the moment I would have expected.

And then it was gone. Just so precious a memory

[Thelnebriati]

@MaryBoBary

I once got stuck behind a pigeon on my way to work.

It was flying at steering wheel height about 10 yards in front of my car. It followed the road and stuck to the left hand side. I couldn't overtake due to it being a windy road. I didn't want to make it jump by pressing the horn so just followed it for about 3-4 minutes.

I once got chased by an enormous bee on a beach. I think it had been blown out to sea, was exhausted, and it was using me as a wind break to get back to land. The problem was it was one of those flat beaches where the sea goes out for miles and I'm quite fat and unfit, and my mates were too helpless with laughter to do anything sensible. Or so they said.
Bastards

[Shikamiri]

@ChristmasFluff WOW I love rainbows, that would have so happy

[Shikamiri]

*made me

[Cowbells]

@ChristmasFluff

Oh, and another one that at the time I thought was unique and people would never believe, but I googled it and found a few videos on YouTube.

I drove through the end of a rainbow. I saw the rainbow hitting the motorway, and then I drove through it. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life - the rainbow seemed inside the car as well as outside, and I was driving thinking 'this can't be happening....' and then 'it can't be lasting this long...' - it lasted seconds rather than the moment I would have expected.

And then it was gone. Just so precious a memory

That happened to me once too. It felt like something magical should happen afterwards but we carried on driving to work!

[LadyEuphemia]

@EarringsandLipstick there was a lot of me screeching ‘WHAT!!!’ when I found it. It was so bizarre!

I really hope they liked each other. But I suspect my very Cockney grandmother might have ruffled the feathers of the genteel country folk. Would make a great sitcom!

[takealettermsjones]

I was on holiday with my DH and we were reminiscing about memories with his aunt, and we later found out she died at the exact moment we were talking about her.

[OccultGnuAsWell]

When I was little my mum used to take me to visit a friend of hers. Friend had no children and there were no others living nearby to play with so I mostly used to amuse myself playing in her garden. I vividly remember running into the house in tears one day as a boy had thrown stones at me over the hedge. Mum's friend comforted me saying that she knew the boy was only visiting his Aunt down the road, he lived a long way away and he wouldn't be around very often. I didn't see him again.

Fast forward thirty years and I met my second husband who was from the North East. He was estranged from family and it was only several years after we married he mentioned he had an Aunt in our city and he used to visit her when he was a child. He said he didn't get invited very often as when he did he was a little sod who tended to roam the area causing mischief.

After checking out his Aunt's address my early stone thrower turned out to be my DH of several years.

[OlivejuiceU2]

I’ve got two....

I was incredibly close to my grandad and he sadly past away on my birthday. Years later my daughter was born on his birthday. The odd thing is, is that she is exactly like him. Looks just like him and is really tall, no one else in mine or my partners family are tall.

Second was thinking I really needed to get in touch with a friend I hadn’t spoken to in ages when at short notice I was asked to go work in Hong Kong. Well guess who I bumped into in Hong Kong.... my friend! Literally in the street. We were also on the same flight back.

[sashh]

Many many years ago a little girl I will call A started school, she walked there with her older sister.

At break or lunch she decided infants wasn't really for her so went to find her sister B.

The teachers let spend the rest of the day sitting between B and another girl C. Girl A was convinced C was 'Rose Red' from the story books because she had pale skin, dark hair and red lips.

Girl A and girl C both grew up and had families, A had three girls, C had three boys.

A was my maternal grandmother, C was my paternal grandmother.

[expectopelargonium]

A relative of mine was on a flight across the Atlantic to go and see her aunt and uncle in the States. She got talking to a couple in the same row of seats and they turned out to be her aunt and uncle's next-door-neighbours.

[ChiefBabySniffer]

This is a bit complex but very 6 degrees.

I live in a very small, mediocre town in the north west. I was part of a hobby and on a forum that was very busy with members from all over the world. One friend, Eric invited me to America to stay with them and attend a hobby show. They even said I could use one of their free flight passes as they worked for an airline. I was obviously delighted. Then I met Nico on the same forum, he wanted to buy something I was selling. Found out that despite being from Brazil, they lived just one estate across from my house.

He popped over to collect the item and saw a hobby magazine on the table. Said, "oh I know the man, Doni, on the front cover, we went to school together and are really close friends. I've been trying to contact him for 4-5 days but nobody knows where is he is ".

I emailed Eric after Nico had left and said I had sorted the flight out and how odd it was that Eric knew Doni but lived around the corner from me thousands of miles away from where they grew up. Then Eric replies "Doni ? Oh, he's in a rainforest in Costa rica at the moment filming a documentary but a storm has affected the communication lines and nobody has been able to get in touch with them for a few days. You will meet him at the show , he's using one of my flight passes and his hotel room is next to ours".

Absolutely bonkers that the four of us come from 3 different countries but all had shared friends in common.

[Veuvestar]

After my husband died, some long lost relatives of his got in touch, from South Africa.
I was about to get on a plane for Australia.
The relative, said oh my son is on holiday in Australia.
Only the same hotel!!
Bizarre.
My son met his cousins at the beach!

[parsnipsnotsprouts]

Cat story is my favourite so far

[allfurcoatnoknickers]

I am the least "woo" person alive, but I have form for manifesting things. So much so that my colleagues at my very strait laced job ask me to do it for them . Two notable times:

1. We were living in a 1 bed flat in a big old house when I had DS. The Garden flat was used as a pied a terre, and the owner was never there, I used to look out of my window at the garden and say "we need X to decide he's downsizing, and ask us to switch flats".
   
   Lo and behold, a couple of weeks later, the whole building gets an email from X asking if anyone wants to swap flats because he wants to downsize, but loves the building and wants to stay. We now live in the garden flat, and he's our upstairs neighbour.
   
   
2. Valentines day 2009. I'm a graduate student and at about 6pm I am moodily doing my washing in the college laundry room and reflecting on my shitty boyfriend. I remember thinking "If my life were a shitty RomCom, a really handsome man would walk in through that door RIGHT NOW". 2 Minutes later, a drop dead gorgeous man walks through the door with his washing, we get chatting and he invites me to a party . I didn't go any further, but I still think of that moment fondly.

[spanieleyes]

I was thinking of buying a new house, two were for sale opposite each other on the same road. I decided to buy the right hand side one. As we were moving in, the people from the left hand side one were moving out. We then discovered that they were moving into a house on the opposite side of the road to the one I was moving out of!

[Squiggymoms]

I have 4 children my first 2 DDs were both born at 04:03 my 2 DSs were both born at 03:57. With 1440 minutes in day that sounds unlikely but is true.

[LouLou789]

One of my ancestors had connections to an historical figure. A few years ago I was looking online at the website of a society commemorating this person and an historical event they were involved in (with my ancestor) I emailed the society explaining my connection and got a reply saying that they had also just had an email from someone else who said they were related to this ancestor. They put us in touch and not only have I now discovered my second cousin and his wife (who are both lovely) but it turns out they live a couple of streets away from my late parents (who would have loved to have known them)

[DietCokeandLime]

I love the cat story!

I have a few things like this, I've done the phone one a few times and I met DH's Mum several times as a child as she worked in a shop my Mum and Gran used to love to go in, almost weekly.

One day, I was going to work the evening shift and I was pottering around during the day. I checked the time and it was 12:32 and I couldn't get that time and that number out of my head all day, I could see it in my minds eye how I saw it, I still can remember everything about it from deciding to check the time until I saw it even now.

That evening around 8pm, I found out my beloved Dad had passed away at 12:32.

[bruffin]

@Squiggymoms

I have 4 children my first 2 DDs were both born at 04:03 my 2 DSs were both born at 03:57. With 1440 minutes in day that sounds unlikely but is true.

My ds and dd were born at 22.42 and 22.47 2 years 5 days apart.Both exactly same weight 2.93 kg.

[SinkGirl]

No one ever believes the actual story behind the giant scar on my arm (nearly amputated falling through a bathroom sink). I used to have fun pretending to people who asked that it was something much more interested - shark bite, attacked with a machete over a small dispute, all of which were apparently more believable than the actual story.

[Needsleeeeepsendheeeelp]

Fab thread!

I became friends with a girl on my course at uni, who was a twin. A couple of weeks into the first term, I had a call from a close school friend who had gone to another uni, to catch up on how uni life was going. It turns out that she was in shared accommodation, and her roommate was my new friend's twin sister! A few years later, my mum and the twins' mum were both be hired to work on a project together, so we had yet another new shared totally random connection. It seems our families were destined to know each other - and a good thing that is, too, as 15 years on I'm still very close to the twins!

[DietCokeandLime]

I've thought of another one:

One night at about 3am, I suddenly bolted awake, just as my phone buzzed as the power had just come back on from a power cut, just as the phone rang to let us know our nephew had just been born

[CounsellorTroi]

My late mother and my MIL were born on the same day.