Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Weird coincidences. Please shate yours.

353 replies

malificent7 · 20/08/2024 22:09

I find it really strange that the codefendant of the tech billionaire that is missing from the yacht in Sicily was killed in a road accident on the same day in a different country. Two totally different accidents. Both were aquiited of fraud and involved in the same case. Totally bizarre.

On a more personsl note a met someone from my year at school at a remote waterfall in Nepal about 20 years ago.

Please share your stories.

OP posts:
NOTANUM · 21/08/2024 08:38

Peaceandquietandacuppa · 21/08/2024 08:08

She meant astrological signs. Horoscopes are based on the exact time/place of birth.

Show quote history

Most people mean the month of the year when they say horoscopes although you are right. Even the papers call them horoscopes, not astrological signs!
Anyhow it is a cool coincidence.

Tahlbias · 21/08/2024 08:39

Newbie8918 · 20/08/2024 23:36

Bare with, I'll try and keep this short.

My Dsis met my BIL at 11 in high school. They're now 32.

BILs grandma recently passed and we all attended the funeral as our families are close. During the eulogy, they spoke about how lucky their grandma was and recalled some tales of her remarkable luck.

One was of a holiday abroad when the grandchildren were young, when she fell over in the sea and resurfaced, holding a gold ring.

I saw my parents immediately look at each other.

In the early 90s both families had visited the same obscure location, a few years apart. They had previously discussed it and remarked that it was a coincidence as it was quite obscure for that time.

Whilst there, dad was snorkelling and lost his very distinctive wedding ring. It was heavily engraved and had his initials inside. Mum had saved every penny to replace and it took years as they had very little spare money.

At the wake, Dad asked BILs parents, if the story about the ring in the sea was in X location and it turns out it was and grandma had actually kept it somewhere and they'd try dig it out when they sort her things.

2 weeks later. BILs parents called into my parents with the ring. It was dad's wedding ring, same engraving and his initials inside.

Sis and BIL would have been 7 (when lost) and 9 (when found) when this happened.
They didn't meet until 11 and the ring was handed back 25 years later.

Dad wears it on his necklace and tells everyone he meets about it 🤣

😳 wow... That's amazing! Now that is a coincidence 😊

Coffeeandcrocs · 21/08/2024 08:40

My DF, FIL and exFIL all have the same birthday

My DF and FIL have the same initials, which are also the same initials as DH and I

Tworedgeraniums · 21/08/2024 08:40

DH and I had friends in common but had never met or knew about each other. At that time we lived an hour apart. In the eighties we both were sub contractors for same company, but never met. Life moved on and we both worked in schools where I’d go to his school for meetings, but never met.

then in 2001 we did meet

Barkingupthewrongtrees · 21/08/2024 08:43

patchysmum · 20/08/2024 23:51

My grandad died on April 14th he was 65,my mum died on April 14th she was also 65.,my husband also died on April 14th

Given me the shivers!

FluffyDiplodocus · 21/08/2024 08:43

I was on a night out in a town about 30 miles away with some old work colleagues I hadn’t seen in a while. We were moving on from the restaurant to town centre and as I was driving I gave one of them a lift. “Oh you got a new car,” she commented as I was reversing. At that very second as if on cue my old car drove into the car park!! I did know the girl who bought it lived in that town, but the timing was just perfect! Never seen it around before or since.

BucketBouquet · 21/08/2024 08:44

Not as good as some of these, but still:

I did a year at university in Wales and hated it - too isolated. I’m from Birmingham, and the only way you get to the uni town by train was to go via Birmingham. Anyway, I was there one night about a year after I’d left the uni and was just thinking about my old friends and how I’d not spoken to anyone for a while. I suddenly felt a tap on my shoulder and there was one of my housemates! He was still at uni in Wales, he lived in Surrey; I’d bumped into him just as I was thinking of him on the one time in three months he’d been there to change trains.

My friend married someone with the same surname as her (not a hugely unusual one, but more so than Smith or Jones) and their fathers had the exact same names.

Another friend is a lifelong toy collector. She and her cousin used to love the same figurines when they were little. They argued about which ones belonged to whom, and always fought over one particular figure, so they started initialling them on the bottom side. My friend’s parents divorced when she was about 10, so she lost touch with her cousin for several years. They met again in adulthood and reminisced about the toys. My friend still collects as an adult, so was gutted to find her cousin had given all her toys to a charity shop in her teens.

Sadly, my friend’s cousin died very young a few years later. Not long afterwards, my friend found someone advertising some of these figurines for sale and drove for about four hours to collect them, as there was a particularly rare one amongst them - the one she used to fight with her cousin over. She checked it over for marks before completing the purchase and, there on the bottom, were her cousin’s initials.

Geminijust · 21/08/2024 08:45

My dad was driving through a London suburb and stopped to let some people cross the zebra crossing. It was his niece & nephew (my cousins) and their partners who live 100 miles away. They'd driven down, parked & were catching the tube into Central London. Thinking about it, it wasn't THAT amazing as my nan used to live in that area some years before so they were familiar with it and knew where to park, but still a coincidence my dad was driving through at that very moment.

Another time, we bumped into someone he used to go to school with while on holiday in Spain and we too have bumped into people from home while on holiday. However, they were in popular tourist places, namely Edinburgh, Wookey Hole & Mexico, but still a coincidence to see people you know many miles from where you usually see them!

12FreeRangeEggs · 21/08/2024 08:45

I was visiting a foreign country that my first boyfriend had coincidentally since moved to. I only knew through social media, hasn’t been in touch with him for 2 decades. I wasn’t anywhere near the region where he was living but on the flight over thought ‘wouldn’t it be funny if I bumped into him’. I did. Walked out of the loos at the airport and DC walked straight into him and stood on his foot. 7 years later I still can’t believe it.

Barkingupthewrongtrees · 21/08/2024 08:45

I’ve thought of another one, turns out that my now husband and I were at the same concert 8 years before we met - how weird I went to that concert not knowing that my future husband was in the same room!

Ginnnny · 21/08/2024 08:47

I briefly had a boyfriend in my early 20s who was born and raised in another country, a country I visited a lot as family lived there. On looking back at old photos MANY years later from when I was around 12/13 in this country, my boyfriend and his family were in the background at a very popular spot. Creepy!

Al991 · 21/08/2024 08:52

Cactusali · 21/08/2024 05:53

‘The following month we go to a gastrointestinal in the Isle of Wight’ Is this an obscure way of saying dinner?

Fcking autocorrect I meant GASTROPUB. Not even going to edit cos it’s funny

wwyd2021medicine · 21/08/2024 08:53

I opened a letter addressed to me - first initial and surname.
Inside were concert tickets with my name as above and address of the university house I had lived in 20 years previously! I asked DH if he had bought concert tickets and was wondering why it had been linked to my previous address - very confusing and weird

Spoke to neighbour - it was actually for neighbours' son 2 doors away who was living in the student house I had been in all those years ago

NeedToKnow101 · 21/08/2024 08:55

Newbie8918 · 20/08/2024 23:36

Bare with, I'll try and keep this short.

My Dsis met my BIL at 11 in high school. They're now 32.

BILs grandma recently passed and we all attended the funeral as our families are close. During the eulogy, they spoke about how lucky their grandma was and recalled some tales of her remarkable luck.

One was of a holiday abroad when the grandchildren were young, when she fell over in the sea and resurfaced, holding a gold ring.

I saw my parents immediately look at each other.

In the early 90s both families had visited the same obscure location, a few years apart. They had previously discussed it and remarked that it was a coincidence as it was quite obscure for that time.

Whilst there, dad was snorkelling and lost his very distinctive wedding ring. It was heavily engraved and had his initials inside. Mum had saved every penny to replace and it took years as they had very little spare money.

At the wake, Dad asked BILs parents, if the story about the ring in the sea was in X location and it turns out it was and grandma had actually kept it somewhere and they'd try dig it out when they sort her things.

2 weeks later. BILs parents called into my parents with the ring. It was dad's wedding ring, same engraving and his initials inside.

Sis and BIL would have been 7 (when lost) and 9 (when found) when this happened.
They didn't meet until 11 and the ring was handed back 25 years later.

Dad wears it on his necklace and tells everyone he meets about it 🤣

That made me cry. On the tube, which is embarrassing 😳

Tworedgeraniums · 21/08/2024 08:58

PercyTrevelyan · 21/08/2024 04:35

Not a huge coincidence but when I worked in the NHS, our offices were in the old local maternity hospital (no longer used and converted into offices).

My boss's office was the same room that she was born in!

Same as DH, the flat he lived in as a baby was his offices thirty years later.

my dads childhood town centre bedroom was the office of my uncle (mums side) forty years later.

Tahlbias · 21/08/2024 09:01

Tarkan · 21/08/2024 02:49

My other one is how often DH and I found we had just missed each other at events etc in our pasts and other things we had that linked us.

His dad had died a few months before we met but it turns out I had actually met my FIL as he was our postie when I was a teenager, so he delivered all my exam results, birthday cards etc to me. This was when you knew you'd have the same postie every day so the Christmas tip my parents would leave for him probably helped FIL have a few drinks after work or put towards Christmas gifts for DH.

DH and I met at a mutual friend's gig but we found out we had been at the same gigs from this friend before, even both speaking to her mum and we still hadn't met each other there.

We'd also been at the same funeral and went to the same local pubs on our own in the months before we met, but our paths had never crossed. We think at best one of us would have been leaving a pub as the other arrived. We also lived just a couple of streets away from each other and I went past his house regularly.

We then worked out that we HAD met each other before as his high school best friend had gone out with my high school best friend back in the late 90s/early 2000s and we had been on the same night out with them.

DH also worked on the railway when we met and he'd gone there after being in the RAF. My granda had done the same two jobs in his life.

It's the same for my husband and I. When we spoke about where we lived, places we went etc, we had been at the same events or just missed each other. So many opportunities to meet earlier but just missed each other.

GiveMeSomeWaterItsHot · 21/08/2024 09:03

We were driving down the motorway and we were talking about the time DH and his mum bought identical cars with consecutive number plates 20 years previously. His had been written off but hers was sold. No more than two minutes later, I saw her car on the other side of the road! Neither of us had seen it in about 15 years but it was right there 😂

OneTC · 21/08/2024 09:05

Once I was driving through the peak district really late, maybe 1am and came across someone walking down the lane towards the nearest town (far away)

I've never picked up a hitch hiker before, and the person didn't actually flag me down but I stopped and asked if they wanted a lift. It was a young bloke, friendly, he was glad of the lift and jumped in and I drove him into town.

A couple of weeks later, at a party in London and a friend came up to me and said he wanted to introduce me to his friend as he thought we'd have a lot in common.

It was the guy I gave a lift to 2 weeks before

PirateJim · 21/08/2024 09:05

Many years ago, I used to make mixed cassette tapes to use in the car. You had to have the car radio switched on, then push the cassette in to play it. I was driving one day with the tape playing a Whitney Houston song, but for whatever reason, decided I didn’t want to listen and pushed the cassette eject button. I was very confused when the song kept playing. Turned out the song was on the radio and was at exactly the same point as when I’d pressed the button to stop it.
Also, my younger daughter is called ‘Lucy’ and is married to a man called ‘Joe’.
My elder daughter’s husband has a sister called ‘Lucy’ and her husband is called ‘Joe’. So my grandchildren have two Aunty Lucys and two Uncle Joes!

Shelby1981 · 21/08/2024 09:09

I was born at 13:13

My son was born at 12:12

I like to think that if I'd had another child they would've been born at 11:11, but it wasn't to be.

Neodymium · 21/08/2024 09:09

We moved to a new state and one day ran into one of my dad’s old work colleagues unexpectedly. Then we moved to another part of the state few years later and ran into her again as she had also ended up moving there. Then one day she turned up in our street - she was our new neighbours cousin. Totally bizarre.

Readinstead · 21/08/2024 09:12

Last year I fractured my wrist on holiday, I didn't go to the hospital for 10 days because I 'knew' it was a sprain. When I went to the hospital to have the cast removed, I went to the wrong hospital initially ie where the cast had been fitted but due the doctors strikes extra clinics had been put on and my appointment was as the other hospital in the trust (always read the letter and not just appt time/date!) . I arrived early for my appointment at the first hospital but 10 minutes late at the other hospital (yes, I did phone and apologise) Sitting waiting for xray, I got chatting to the woman next to me. She had fractured her wrist on holiday, didn't go to hospital for 10 days as she was on a cruise, she had made the same mistake re hospitals as I had (didn't read the letter properly either) and our appointments were for the same time. She was the same age as meand like me had 1 daughter and three grandchildren.
Apart from that, my only coincidences are related to singing a song in the house whilst getting ready to go out (no music playing) snd then switching the radio on in the car and the same song is playing. This does happen fairly regularly.

LadyAsnowt · 21/08/2024 09:29

In a bar on a business trip to Boston I ran into a man I'd had a fling with in London when we were both students around 20 years previously. He was from LA and I'm from the UK. Neither of us had ever been to Boston before.*

*There is no fairytale ending to this. Both happily married, but we do keep in touch and our families have since met.

Newbie8918 · 21/08/2024 09:31

Barkingupthewrongtrees · 21/08/2024 08:45

I’ve thought of another one, turns out that my now husband and I were at the same concert 8 years before we met - how weird I went to that concert not knowing that my future husband was in the same room!

I love these ones. I visited a very specific place in a foreign country with my DH when we first met. It was the ruins of a monastery and it was magical.

5 years later he proposed. We looked at venues in several countries and ended up in a rabbit hole of clicks and found that the monastery that we visited all those years ago how hosted weddings.

I have two identical pics. One of the central aisle in the monastery, completely empty all those years ago and then the same shot of my dad, walking me down the aisle towards DH.

I never imagined when we first visited that, this was the aisle that I'd walk down to get married, 100s of miles away from home!

Newbie8918 · 21/08/2024 09:33

@NeedToKnow101 oh gosh! Sorry!

The ring itself was a Mizpah ring which is also a lovely story behind it.