It seems like BuzzFeeders have experienced A LOT of low-probability events, and each one I read gets more and more shocking!
Here are a bunch that recently blew my mind:
1. "One time, I was in a cab and my card would not work in the card swiper thingy, so thankfully, we were next to a sketchy liquor store with an ATM attached to the building. I begrudgingly ask[ed] the cab driver if he could keep the meter running and wait one second so I could get cash out at that ATM."
2. "I was on the bus, reading a magazine. The article was about a specific woman who happened to live in the city where I live. I happened to look up from the magazine when the bus stopped for a moment. The bus had stopped to let somebody cross the street. The person crossing the street was the same woman in the magazine article I had been reading."
3. "I was stationed at Ft. Detrick, Maryland a number of years ago and we were assigned post housing. Soon after we arrived, someone knocked on our door and asked us to sign a petition for central air. I signed and was told they were confident we’d get it soon."
"A week or so later, as I was signing up for a class at nearby Hood College, the woman signing me up noticed my address. It was the same address she’d had some 20 years earlier. 'Do you have central air?' she asked. 'Why do you ask?' I said. 'Well, when we moved in we signed a petition for central air and were told we’d be getting it soon.'"
—greenpuppy89
4. "After I proposed to my girlfriend (now wife of 22 years), she set up an online registry and checklist for our wedding. Back then all you needed was a four-digit passcode. She sent me the login credentials and when I saw the passcode she had chosen, my heart skipped a beat."
"I asked her why she chose that number and she told me it was her ATM pin number. It was also my ATM pin number. She made hers from family birthdays and mine came from the last 4 digits of the phone number my family had 20 years before in a different state 1500 miles away."
—cornyalligator96
5. "I was reading a humor/memoir-type book and the author was describing her kidney stones. I could really feel it and thought she was maybe the best writer ever to describe something so perfectly that I could feel it. Cut to an hour later and I'm in the emergency room being treated for kidney stones."
6. "When I was in high school, my parents were looking to buy a new house, and I went to an open house with them. While touring the home, I decided which room I'd want to be mine if they got that house. I specifically told them I loved the large closet and built-in shelving."
"When I opened the closet to show them how big it was, the first sweatshirt hanging was an old soccer tournament sweatshirt from several years prior with all the teams names, player names, and age brackets. Realizing it looked familiar, I scanned the names and saw my name on the list. I had apparently played against this girl in a soccer tournament a decade prior, and was going to be living in her old place."
7. "Hubby and I were watching R. Lee Ermey’s show Mail Call on TV one night years ago. I made hubby two sandwiches to eat while we watched, and he had just finished one of them. As the show went to a commercial break, hubby picked up the second one and right then, Ermey says, 'You don’t need that second sandwich, lard ass!'"
8. "My older sister has four kids, and for each one, she was pregnant at the same time as at least one of her other sisters. All of her kids have at least one cousin the same age. Her youngest is the same age as my son. They were born exactly six weeks apart to the hour."
9. "A couple of years ago, my mum and I were living in different but adjacent towns. We were talking on the phone one evening, and she told me about a weird guy she had met at a bus stop in the morning and the random things he was ranting about. I had met the same guy at a bus stop that afternoon, and he was saying the same exact things, except in the version of the rant, I heard he also incorporated a comment my mum had made to him that morning."
10. "In 2004, I was backpacking around Europe with my then-boyfriend after the end of a semester abroad. It was before smartphones so we were very out of touch unless we stopped at an Internet cafe. We had an unlimited train pass, so we would go to the station, pick a random destination and go. We chose Copenhagen, and when we got there it was INSANELY crowded. Like, couldn’t move on the sidewalks. We thought 'Wow, didn’t realize it was so densely populated!' Turns out, at the destination we had chosen randomly on a random day, we showed up 45 minutes before the Danish royal wedding—the event of the century. We got to watch the procession!"
11. "I married in 1999. I have a sister who never wanted to get married. She’s been with the same guy since '96. Neither one of them celebrates any holiday or birthdays, so it made sense they wouldn’t marry. During the pandemic, they sold their house while they were living in a another country and my sister asked me to pack it and get it ready for the new owners. While packing their house I found their marriage certificate from seven years earlier!"
"I called her to tell her I knew about their marriage. She said she forgot all about it. She said, 'We married for the taxes. We will divorce if it’s more favorable economically for us—but will still be together.' I asked her: 'When is your wedding anniversary?' She said, 'I don’t know. I can’t remember.' I say, 'It’s the SAME as MINE!! You married on MY wedding anniversary and didn’t even tell me about it!' We still laugh about it."
12. "My brother and I are both named for family members (me for my grandma and a great aunt, my brother for our great grandpa and our grandpa’s last name). It was only much later that my mom realized we both shared names with main characters in To Kill A Mockingbird. Scout’s real name is Jean Louise (my name), and Dill’s real name is Charles Baker (my brother’s name). It’s the top random fact for us."
13. "In 1996-1997, I was attending junior college in California and had some pretty great teachers. My favorite though was my Early Childhood Studies teacher. She was kind, supportive, and encouraging. Flash forward 22 years, almost 800 miles, and a state away. I'm working at a high school and a student’s grandma comes in to drop some clothes off for her granddaughter. About 60 seconds after leaving she comes back into the school and asks me by my name if it's me. My favorite teacher from decades ago was living in another state and remembered me and my name."
14. "We were in our early 20’s and hanging out at our parents house, and my brother was on the floor playing with our dog, and I was on the couch watching TV. Anyway, my brother grabs a tennis ball, and tosses it to the dog. The dog had really bad timing and closed his mouth before the ball got there. So the ball bounces off the dogs chin and right into my brothers open eye. It ended up scratching his cornea, and he went to an urgent care clinic. The doctor was surprised, because when he was younger he scratched his cornea the exact same way."
15. "I have a 10-year-old daughter in 5th grade who has a classmate that has become a good friend. At this friend’s birthday party, I met his grandmother. We got to talking and found out that she went to the same high school as my mother, though not at the same time. My father taught math for one year at that same school. Guess who was in my father’s class that year? The friend’s grandmother."
"Even weirder still is the fact that this woman grew up about 100 yards from where MY grandparents lived, and her father (my daughter’s friends great-grandfather) served on their town’s City Council at the same time as my grandfather. This is not the town that we currently live in, either. Any one of those coincidences would be strange enough. But all three of those things with coincidences spanning four generations? The odds of that are astronomical."
—awkwardshield13
16. "A few years after high school, I learned that a friend had moved to a large city that was in a state on the other side of the USA. I decided a few years later to move to the same city. We had lost touch, so I thought that I might find him, by chance, at a concert or other public event."
"I did run into him, shortly after arriving in the new city, but oddly, on my way home from work, while buying seafood at a little local shop. Because it was raining and he was riding his bicycle, I offered him a ride to his home, which, it just so happened, was literally next door, on a property around the corner that was separated only by my back yard fence. We had been next door neighbors for months without knowing it. Really, what are the odds?"
—jealousjester45
17. "My father's name is Peter John. My father-in-law is John Peter."
18. And finally, "I looked up the title history of my house (when it was built and who all the owners have been since then). The first owner of my house when it was built in the '60s was a woman I worked with at my last job. We do NOT live in a small town. She has an unusual name, so I know it's definitely her."
Have you ever experienced a low probability event? Let us know in the comments below or anonymously using this Google Form.
Responses may be edited for length/clarity.