BuzzFeed Community users recently shared with us the most statistically improbable coincidences they've ever experienced in their lives. Some of their stories are truly one in a million. Here's what they revealed:
1. "I work for a company of 10. None of us are even in the same state. One of my colleagues has the same birthday as me, and our husbands have the same birthday as well. Another colleague is also nine years older than her spouse, as am I (both of us females), and her daughter and my sister are both named Kara. My two sons have the same birthdays as two of my colleagues (one in April and one in December). Two of my colleagues are married to women with the same names, and two have children with the same names. Of all my closest friends throughout my life, every one of them has been a Cancer (and I don’t even believe in that stuff). I understand the name thing can be due to popularity, but the birthdates in such a small company is where it gets weird. Oh, and my mom also has the same birthday as a colleague. There are patterns in life if you pay attention."
2. "When I was 14 or 15, we lived in the country and had a calico cat. This cat wanted to be outside all the time to hunt and explore, and it was a battle to keep her inside. Eventually, my parents decided to move into town, and at the same time, we had a family friend who wanted a barn cat. We felt that our cat would be happier living with them now that we were moving into town. One morning, before school, my mom called me out to the living room of our new house. There was our cat, sitting on the front porch, looking in the window. She found us in a totally new house about 20 miles from where our family friend who adopted her lived."
3. "My wife and I met seven years ago on Match.com after I accidentally liked one of her pics. We keep finding out that we were in the same location, sometimes the same event, building, or even the same room, all throughout our lives. She grew up in a town about 20 miles from me. I went to her high school graduation because I went to see a friend graduating. We went to several of the same church youth functions with kids from three counties. While she was fostering two of her nieces, she brought them to the Showbiz Pizza where I worked during college. We were both at the same two concerts at the Civic auditorium. I held the elevator for her once after my divorce counseling session because she was there for grief counseling after her daughter passed. And, she’s pretty sure that I offered to help her about a year before we met when she was at Lowe's (where I worked). This was all way before we met online."
"Then, at our wedding reception, I was taking her brother around to meet my family and found out that he used to work for my brother-in-law, which meant he also had met my late sister who would hand out the paychecks. I showed my wife a picture of my late sister with some friends. My wife knew two of my sister’s friends because they would often come into the store where she worked almost 20 years ago. When I described my sister’s kids, she remembered my sister bringing her kids into the store. It only took almost 40 years for us to finally get together after circling each other but never realizing who we each were."
4. "Years ago, while working downtown, I parked in a parking garage around the same spot every day. I started early, so the garage was pretty empty when I arrived. I always wore a diamond necklace that my grandmother had given me on my high school graduation. She gave similar ones to all her granddaughters when they graduated, and I was the only one who still had mine and wore it all the time. One day after work, I noticed that the chain must have broken and the necklace was not on my neck. I was devastated. I looked everywhere for that necklace — work, home, my car, EVERYWHERE. I was finally resigned to the fact that I had lost it for good and told my grandma in heaven how sorry I was. A year later, as I was getting in my car after work, a shiny sparkle on the garage floor caught my eye. I reached down to see what it was, and lo and behold, it was my necklace. I couldn’t believe it. The setting was a little bent up, but the diamond was still in it."
5. "My dad was a HUGE Rolling Stones fan. He took me to three or four of their concerts growing up. It was just a thing we did whenever they would come to town. One of his favorite songs was 'Beast of Burden.' When he passed away, I would get into my car on a bad day, and, without fail, the first song that would come on the radio was 'Beast of Burden' by the Rolling Stones. This phenomenon still happens to this day when I'm missing my dad. Or, it will randomly show up on a playlist as a 'suggested' song and play. I sure do miss that man!"
6. "My husband and I moved into our new home in 2005. The people behind us moved in the exact same day. For over a year, we got to know them and chatted over the fence. Around Christmas 2006, my husband's aunt passed away. I looked after our niece and nephew while he and his sister went to the funeral. He came home and asked me to guess who he saw at the funeral and found out he was related to. It was the lady that lived behind us. Her mom and my father-in-law are first cousins. So wild. They had never met, as the family wasn’t close."
7. "My senior year of college, I lived with a friend who was a couple years older than me. One weekend, she invited me to go with her to her cousin’s bachelorette party (just a night out in the city nearby), and I went. I had a fun time, met the bride-to-be, and even had a photo or two taken with her. Two years later, my friend was now the one getting married. At the wedding afterparty, I met a guy who I hit it off with. We talked for hours and ultimately started dating. I met his siblings, and guess who one of them was? The bride from that bachelorette party two years prior! His sisters even pulled out a photo album with pics from that night and found one with me in it! That guy is now my husband, and therefore, the 'random woman' whose bachelorette party I went to is now my sister-in-law! Oh, and I guess my friend is now my cousin-in-law, too!"
8. "My wife and I were flying back from Athens to DC and had a layover in Paris. At the same time, my best friend was flying from Philly to Milan with a layover in Paris. My wife and I missed our fight from Paris to DC due to delays in Greece. My wife wanted to go to the Air France desk in a different terminal, but I said we should stay in this terminal, so we did. While walking to the Air France desk to figure things out, I heard someone yell, 'Oh my god, [my name]!' I looked up and saw my best friend, his wife, their kids, and their grandmother. They also missed their flight and were trying to figure things out. They were on their way to a different part of the airport, but their kids wanted to stop and play on the piano near the Air France desk we were by."
"Neither of us knew the other was flying, nonetheless flying through Paris. Missing our flights sucked, and we both had to spend the night in Paris, but at least we got to hang out, which made it a little less stressful. Plus, I was able to lend my friend an extra plug converter so he could charge his devices. If we went to a different Air France desk, or if my friend's kids didn't stop at that exact piano, we never would have seen each other."
9. "I was coming home after a business trip, and I was dying to see my kids and husband. I got home, and the house was dark — no one was there. A few minutes later, my husband called. They were at the hospital because his mom had come in through the emergency room and been admitted. I went to the hospital, and I saw my mom there. My dad was in emergency surgery. Then, I saw my sister-in-law. Her mother was there with a heart attack. The look on the doctor's face when he realized we were the only family he needed to talk to about three separate cases."
10. "There was this guy at my school, and we weren't really friends, but we got along. One day, I chatted with my mum about eye colors or something, and I said, 'X at school has the weirdest blue eyes ever.' She said: 'How funny. The woman I shared a room with in hospital after your birth had a son by the same name.' I remembered him being a day younger than me, so it was possible. I asked him, he asked his mom, and yeah, we met when I was one day old and he was just born. That makes him my oldest acquaintance!"
11. "My husband found out a few years ago that he has a younger half-brother. Apparently, while his parents were on a break after his mom got pregnant, his dad fathered another child but didn't know. This child was given up for adoption by the mother. He grew up in a different town than my husband, but ended up in a place about three hours away from where we live now. We decided to meet one year, face-to-face, after getting to know each other over texting and messaging. We met him and his wife, who I found out not only has the same first name as me, but we attended the same college (hours away), lived in the same dorm and on the same floor, and had the same friends."
12. "WAAAY back, in 1973, my college roomie and I decided to drive across the US on summer break. We piled into my VW bug, along with her dog, and took off from Florida. We didn't have much money, so I'm not sure what we were thinking, but at one point on our journey, we stopped at a very isolated campground somewhere in the middle of the country. As we parked, the dog ran out of the car and took off. We roamed around the campsite calling for her and finally found her next to a beautiful, big RV. The elderly couple who owned it were petting and feeding her. We got to talking and discovered that we were all originally from Pennsylvania. It turned out that the elderly couple were best friends with my favorite aunt and uncle, and they had just had dinner with them the night before they took off in their RV."
"They fed us, gave us a bunch of food to take with us, and insisted we take some money to help in our journey. It was so amazingly coincidental, and obviously meant to be!"
13. "When I was in fourth grade, my best friend moved to Vegas. I moved away shortly after her. We wrote letters to each other a few times, but lost contact over the years. Fast-forward to my 13th birthday. We were at the airport waiting for our flight, and as we were walking to board the plane, I passed this mom and her daughter fast asleep on two of the chairs in the waiting area (waiting for a different flight). Sure enough, it was my childhood best friend, but she was soundly asleep, and I wasn't about to wake her up. I still think about where she is today and if she even remembers me, but it was a cool experience. I even still have the friendship bracelet she gave me in second grade."
14. "I grew up in Alabama and did a lot of theatre competitions in high school. In 2019, I moved out to Southern California and started working at Starbucks. One night, a girl my age came in, and we were chatting about our interests while her drink was being made. Suddenly, she mentioned the name of a theatre competition that I went to yearly back in Alabama. We figured out that not only did we compete at the same competition, but we both sang together in a group of theatre kids goofing off before the awards ceremony. I actually ran into her two more times: once at a different Starbucks and once at a bus stop. After that, the pandemic started, and I haven’t seen her since."
15. "I was waiting to cross the border into Botswana, and the book I was reading to pass the time (African border crossings can come with quite a queue) came to the chapter 'Welcome to Botswana,' which I didn’t even know was in the book!"
16. "I was watching the show Bridezillas with my grandma and my then-boyfriend. The bride was a very young, super bratty girl, marrying an Army dude. When the episode ended, I told my boyfriend if I ever saw that girl, I would pour a chocolate shake on her head for treating everyone around her so poorly. One day later, we were eating at Denny's, and I ordered a milkshake. OUR SERVER WAS THE GIRL FROM BRIDEZILLAS! My then-boyfriend said, 'What was it you said you were going to do if you every saw her?' Needless to say, I didn't actually pour the shake on her."
17. "When my family moved back home to Ohio from Texas, we were on the last leg of a two-day journey and passed under the 'Welcome to Ohio' sign on I-75 as a car pulled up beside us. It was my parents' close friends. They were in each other's weddings. They were coming back home from a Florida vacation. We stopped and got pizza. Fast-forward 20 years, and the dad from that family hired me to work for him at a car dealership. I was in my early 20s and fresh off a divorce, and he asked the sales guys not to mess with me. After I worked for him for two weeks, one of the sales guys told him he wanted to take me on a nice date and wasn’t asking for his permission, but he knew this was like my uncle and he wanted to be respectful. That young man and I went on a date, and we have been married for 15 years and have two daughters."
18. "I live in Montreal and used to train at a boxing gym enough to become friends/acquaintances with the other regulars. My husband and I had a wedding to attend in Vernon, BC, so we made it a vacation and roadtripped through BC and Alberta. As we were returning the rental car at the Hertz in Calgary, I ran into one of my boxing friends who happened to be in Calgary and needed a car. We were the only three customers there. Definitely did a double take when I saw him!"
19. "My husband's cousin killed my great-uncle in a head-on collision which resulted in both their deaths. The wild part was that they were both over 200 miles away from home, headed in opposite directions on a rural highway. They didn’t know each other, and it was a freak accident. We found out when my family and his family had funerals the same week, and when I heard familiar names being mentioned, I looked up details about the crash in the local newspaper. Sure enough, it was them who had died in a coincidental and unfortunate accident."
20. "A girlfriend from college and I were driving from our college to her family’s home three hours away where I’d be meeting her mom and brothers for the first time. As we drove down the freeway in her mom’s truck (which we were returning to get my girlfriend’s car back because it had been in the shop), we happened to be talking about one of her brothers when a small, red car merged on to the freeway next to us. It was my girlfriend’s brother, who were talking about at that moment, driving her car, which he just picked up at the shop."
21. "I moved from New Hampshire to California, and I moved before selling my home in NH. Once it went on the market, the first offer that I got was from a couple that happened to live on the same street that I lived on in CA."
22. "I met my husband through a personal ad. He contacted me after running a search on a word from his ad: 'gentleman.' Only two ads popped up, his and mine. The day we met, we got to talking and found out we'd lived a block apart when I first moved to the city. I'd been working a temp job when I put the ad out because I didn't have a computer. That job was only a block away from where he worked. I had answered his email a month late, figuring someone so nice had to have met someone already, starting with, 'Sorry it took so bloody long to get back to you.' We met in person that Saturday at noon, and after walking around, we sat down to continue our conversation. Then, at 4:00 p.m., he looked at me, turned white, and said: 'My god, this is actually happening!' My reply was: 'I know, I feel the same way!' It took four hours for love-at-first-sight to hit, and so far, we've been married for 23 years."
23. "I talked to and went on a few dates with a guy (I’ll call him Bob), but he ended up being an a-hole. I hung out at his house once and briefly met his roommates. About six months later, I started a new job, and a coworker needed a ride to work one day. I picked her up at the same house Bob lived in. I assumed he had moved and didn’t think much of it. Later that day, during my shift, I asked my coworker if she knew someone named Bob. She said: 'I literally kicked him out last week!' and we both shared stories of Bob being a weirdo and an a-hole. Turns out my coworker was his aunt, and she was one of the people I briefly met when I came to his house that one time!"
24. "When I was in high school, my family adopted a cat who was at a local pet shop as part of an adoption program put on by the local humane society. She had been fostered before then in a house with dogs and other cats, which was something we were looking for. My second year of high school, a new kid showed up, and we became friends. We got to talking about the pets we had, and I mentioned the cat we had adopted the year prior. She had a fairly unusual name, and my friend gave me a strange look when I mentioned her. She described my cat exactly, and it turned out that her family had fostered my cat! It was one of the few times that her family had fostered cats. My friend's mom was more into rescuing Italian greyhounds. Somehow, out of 500,000 people, we had managed to run into each other."
25. "In the 1980s, I was living and working in Colorado. My company's headquarters were in Northern California. One particular engineer would travel to our location every six weeks or so, and we became work friends. Fast-forward 11 years, and my husband was at a vineyard in California's Temecula Valley. While chatting with the man next to him, they realized it was the same engineer from all those years ago. Tiny, small world."
26. And: "I got on Tinder just for fun and matched with a cute guy in Australia (I was in Idaho), and we became friends. We talked on the phone a few times, and I thought that was that. Then, as I was lining up with my university choir to sing at an event, I heard someone call my name. It was the Australian guy! He moved to the US, applied to the same school, and was able to join my choir randomly. Biggest coincidence of my life. We went out a few times, but I ended up getting married to someone else."
Do you have a wild coincidence or one-in-a-million story you'd like to share? Tell us in the comments!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.