If we're being real with ourselves, most days are pretty boring, with nothing out of the ordinary happening. But every once in a while, odds be damned, something wild happens that makes you go:
We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the wild coincidence they can't believe actually happened to them, and boy did they deliver. Here are the best responses (along with a few classic ones from a previous post on this subject):
1. "I moved to a new city far away to start a new job. I met a guy on a dating app and we instantly hit it off. We dated and were completely inseparable, even getting matching tattoos. High passion and love levels on both sides. After a year or so he asked me to move in. The day I’m moving in, his wife came home, eight months pregnant. There were absolutely NO signs he was ever married. The insane part is that I had grown up with her and her sister in a very small town far, farrrrr awayyyyyyyy. I'd stayed the night at her house growing up and everything."
2. "While I was working at Domino's I took an order from an old couple that was having trouble with their card. Turned out it was my father's brand new credit card. They'd got the card info by going through our mail and the reason it didn’t work at first was because it wasn’t activated yet."
3. "Years ago, my uncle bought me pajamas as a Christmas gift. He left the gift receipt in the box, and when I saw the date and time on the receipt, I screamed! What are the odds? 12/12/2012 at 12:12?!"
Here's the receipt:
4. "I was a Canadian working in Israel when someone asked me if I knew their friend in Alberta (I was from Nova Scotia, which is on the opposite side of the country from Alberta). I had my speech about how we’re the second largest country in the world and not some small town where everyone knows everyone else all prepared, but when they told me their friend’s name...I did know them."
5. "I used to own a china doll with a broken off missing hand. During a day trip, I found a hand on the ground which looked to be the same size and material of the doll I had at home, so I took it home with me. I couldn’t believe my eyes when it fit onto the broken arm like two pieces of a jigsaw."
6. "I worked in a call center and was making small talk with a customer named Amanda while waiting for her account to load. We got to talking about siblings, and she mentioned her older sister named Melissa and her younger brother Nicholas. My siblings and me? Melissa (oldest), Amanda (middle), and Nicholas (me, the youngest)."
7. "I was listening to an audiobook on the train when the woman across from me kept asking me innocuous questions. I was tired from work, though, so I took out an earbud and apologized, saying I was really focused on this audiobook and didn't mean to ignore her. She lit up and said she is a voice actor for audiobook recordings, and asked me what I was listening to. I turned my phone around and she said she was the narrator of the audiobook I was listening to!"
8. "A few years ago, my bad ass grandpa fell into a river in Alaska. He was 87 and on a fishing trip. He used the skills taught to him in the Air Force to stay afloat, and managed to climb onto a log as he floated downstream. A man saw him and pulled him out of the river, saving his life. Grandpa decided that he needed to end his trip early after that brush with death, so he changed his flight to leave a couple days later. Guess who just happened to sit next to him on the new flight? Yep, the guy that pulled him from the river."
9. "My history teacher was showing us a slideshow of her trip to China when one of my classmates shouted, 'Hey, those are my parents!' Indeed, this girl's parents were in the background of my teacher's picture at Tiananmen Square. They not only were visiting China at the exact same time, but crossed paths with their daughter's teacher at just the right moment to photobomb her."
Not the actual photo but it probably looked a little like this:
10. "I was driving for Uber after getting laid off a few years ago. Picked up a white woman (yes, necessary detail) and randomly, based on her name which was the same as my grandmother's, we started talking about our families. Long story short, it turns out she was the descendant of my ancestors' owners in South Carolina. She was a very nice lady and was absolutely horrified. It was definitely surreal and she left me a huge tip. Reparations I guess?"
11. "I went to primary school with two boys both named Andrew James Scott. Common enough first, middle and last names, but there were only 20 or so kids in my class total, AND they had exactly the same birthday."
"One of them changed schools in the second grade, and I have no memory of what we called them to differentiate them."
12. "In 2019, I was on my way to a Halloween party (fairly drunk) when a fight broke out and I ended up getting stabbed. At the time, I was in shock and didn't realize I was stabbed, so I went to the party anyway. A man there told me he could see my muscle sticking out of my side and to call 911. Fast-forward to a few weeks ago. I went to get a tattoo of a knife under my scar. After some conversation, we realized that the tattoo artist was...the guy from the party! I live in a fairly large city, so I was completely mind blown."
13. "When I was a kid my mom took me to see a local stage production of Hello Dolly where one of the actors fell off the stage. As an adult I was telling my husband this story when he added 'Yeah, they fell on the trombone player." Turns out we were both in the same audience on the same day 12 years before we ever met in person."
14. "I live in Southern Arizona and my cousin lives in Manhattan. For a period in the late '90s her long-time partner lived in San Antonio. About twice a month my cousin would fly out to spend the weekend with him. Anyway, about five years ago I had a client that I would swap used books with, and she gave me a bundle she'd purchased from a thrift store. As I was flipping through one of the books a very faded airline boarding pass fell out. It was for a flight from New York to San Antonio in 1998, and the name on the ticket was Karen Goldstein...my cousin's name. Somehow that book made it across the country and into my hands. Craziest thing that’s ever happened to me!"
15. "On my 33rd birthday, I went to use the restroom and mentioned to the person at the sink next to me that it was my birthday (it was the jovial 'drunken ladies room' by this point of the evening). Another girl nearby overheard and said it was also her birthday. She, too, was turning 33, and we were born on the very same day and year, at the very same hospital only a few hours apart. We’re still friends a few years later."
16. "My dad's youngest brother lived in the city and worked with dad. My mom's younger sister was close to his age and knew him from hanging out. One Friday night he missed a turn coming back to the city, went airborne and hit head-on with my mom's sister's car with two children in the back seat, packed and headed to the lake. Neither knew of the other's plans. My dad's brother died instantly and my mom's sister ran to see if she could help anyone and flipped out."
17. "I’m originally from the Midwest and moved out to California after grad school. I was lonely so I agreed to meet a guy I'd met online. When we first greeted each other he kept telling me that I looked really familiar. After talking for some time he mentioned that he was an officer in the Navy. I told him so was my brother. Then he looked at me funny and said, ‘Wait, is your last name *****?’ I was floored, turns out he and my brother had gone to a specialized school together years before and he remembered my brother because he placed top of the class and according to this guy was ‘super smart!’ I never even knew that about my brother until I met that guy! Such a small world!"
18. "I got locked out of my apartment in the rain after a long day, so I took the metro all the way back across town to search for the keys at work. Looked everywhere. No keys. By then the metro closed for the night, and it was too late to call a friend to ask if I could crash on their couch, so I slept at my desk. Around 4 a.m. I woke up from a dream where I'd seen the keys lying on a dark grey carpet. I jumped out of my 'chair/bed' and stumbled through the darkened building hallways down to the ground floor conference room where the day earlier I'd attended a company Town Hall meeting. Once inside, I discovered someone moved the hall's sliding walls around so it was hard to locate where I sat exactly. Out of frustration, I shoved a chair out of the way and — voila — my keys were right there on the carpet exactly as I dreamt!"
