Share your amazing coincidence story

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Today in my car I was listening to a podcast of Sam Harris where his guest was Rener Gracie of the Gracie Jiu-Jitsui family. (I'd never heard of them before.) Anyway just as the podcast started I happened to turn my head to the left and saw this big sign "Gracie University". I happened to be driving by the headquarters of this large organization just as I started the podcast, and happened to look up and notice the sign. I thought it was an amazing coincidence and I can't imagine the odds of all that happening randomly.

Anyway, just wanted to share this strange story. Always find coincidences and serendipity fascinating-anyone have any interesting stories to tell?
 
The gracie family are pioneers in BJJ, they have schools all across the country.

Also, Rener is barely a gracie. He's basically a youtuber. Of course, he's a high level, but not gracie royalty like royce, royler or rickson, they were savages.
 
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My brother told me his mom's name was Alice. My mother's name was, too.
 
About 3 decades ago I went to Australia on vacation. I went with my friend, a fellow named Jeff Williams. He had gone to sleep early, and I was socializing at some gathering.

I was talking with two Aussie ladies. When the subject came up that my friend had come to Australia with me one of them said "As long as its not Jeff Williams".

I said "How did you know?". They said "Know what?"

I said "How did you know his name?" They said "who?"

I said "My friend. Jeff Williams"

Their jaws dropped. "Jeff Williams? You're friends with Jeff Williams?"

They started clutching their hands to their heads. "I can't believe you brought Jeff Williams here? Jeff Williams from Los Angeles in America?" They were dismayed and devastated.

I said "Yes. How do you know him?"

Turns out it was a different Jeff Williams they were referring to, and that they had a bad experience with the other fellow.
 
ponyboy said:
The gracie family are pioneers in BJJ, they have schools all across the country.

Also, Rener is barely a gracie. He's basically a youtuber. Of course, he's a high level, but not gracie royalty like royce, royler or rickson, they were savages.
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I was never much of a fight watcher, but many years ago I was stationed with a guy who had a bunch of recorded (VHS) tapes of the early MMA fights (1993/94) where Royce Gracie just dominated the fights. They were no holds barred, no time limits, no judges, no drug tests, bare knuckles, just about anything went (except eye gouging and biting but groin strikes were OK). :eek: The only way to win was by knockout, submission or corner stoppage. Some of the fights were absolutely brutal.

I can think of a couple of odd coincidences, but nothing too entertaining to share. :)
 
I have many, but the one that comes to mind immediately was a funny thing that happened at a Casino while I was playing a table game... A guy walks up and drops a one hundred dollar bill on the table to "buy in"... The dealer picks up the bill and says, ok sir, what value chips would you like for this "Ben Franklin".... The player told him and then the dealer asked him for his players card so he could get points for his play. When the player gave him his card, the dealer breaks out laughing and says, OMG, I guess that really is your hundred dollar bill..... The players name was Ben Franklin too.... We all got a good laugh.


Just in case you don't get it, Ben Franklin's picture is on a US hundred dollar bill, so it's often called a Ben Franklin.
 
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Several years ago, 3 hour before I was going to fly to California, I got a telegram that a high-ranking professor was going to interview me in HongKong for a PhD scholarship that I applied for in Scandinavia. I cancelled the flight, flew to Hongkong right away, did the interview, got the full PhD scholarship. 3 years later, I completed my PhD .. and my life changed completely forever. And when I applied for that PhD scholarship months ago, they replied to me that I needed to send a PhD dissertation proposal and had to meet a deadline for that proposal. When I got that feedback, the deadline was weeks after I got the notice, but sent my proposal anyway (and explained that I received the notice late, but hope they still get to read my proposal). Guess it was really meant to be (my fate) - no coincidences.
 
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An interesting topic! Over ten years ago, I was going to post about this very odd coincidence, but never did...

Back in 1973, I think it was, I went with some friends to the Arie Crown Theater in Chicago. We went to see Traffic. The warm-up act was a guy I never heard of, who played acoustic guitar, loudly. I soon forgot his name, but there was a catchy tune he played, that I never heard again, or of him either.

Flip forward to 35+ years later... one day, out of the blue, I suddenly remembered the main line out of the song, and that his name was John M-something. If I remembered to, I would try the song line in google some time.

The next day I did. The song was "May you never", he was John Martyn. And after further searching, new late-breaking info popped up. That he had died the day before, the day I thought of him after 35+ years of nothing. The day I thought of him, I had no connection with any source of information or news, and certainly not from the UK. No way could I have overheard it somewhere. <insert spooky sound here!>

After that, I have played some of his music via Youtube, and was really struck by as relatively few years beyond his appearance in Chi-Town, how quickly he went downhill. In the old days, it would have been described as "a life of dissipation". There is a story of his life online, dissipation indeed!

His name should be immediately recognizable to anyone in the UK. In the USA... John who? what?
 
January 1974 DW and I took a 1 week vacation in Macuto, small beach town outside of Caracas, Venezuela. Back then Venezuela was oil-rich, safe for tourists, but still somewhat rare for Americans to visit. We met a couple at our hotel, and befriended them. Turns out they lived in the apartment building right next to ours back in Brooklyn NY.
 
I mentioned this in a thread years ago. I have a "FIRE twin". When I started with Megacorp I went through a year of the Megacorp training program with a group of folks and hired around the same time, and we got to be friends. On one moth long training assignment I roomed with one who had started on the same day I did, in a different state. It seemed my DW (girlfriend at the time) would call and he would be the one to answer, and his DW (also girlfriend at the time) would call and I would be the one to answer. We each got to know the others wives through those calls. We had kept in loose touch as our careers moved us around Megacorp. When I sent out my "so long" email to my co-worker friends, he contacted me - he was also retiring, on the exact same day. So we both started at and retired from Megacorp on the same days.
 
OP it's called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.
 
My wife and I were walking down the street after getting off a cruise ship in Warnemuende, Germany.

We ran into my sister and brother in law on the town square at a flea market. We hadn't seen'em in 6 months.

It's a small world.
 
Aerides said:
OP it's called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.
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Yes, but I learned about that long before the Baader-Meinhof gang even existed. Alas, I don't remember what it was called back then (in the 70s).

Classic example: You meet a new girlfriend/boyfriend, and they drive a particular model and color car. Suddenly you start seeing that color car everywhere.
 
Ships passing in the night June 2013. braumeister's small ship was docking in Juneau AK as mine was loading up for an inside passage small ship cruise.
 
REWahoo said:
Checking into a hotel in London the guy in line behind me was my copilot in the AF who I hadn't seen in almost 10 years.
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Years ago, when I was traveling all over the world for various reasons, I would often run into someone I hadn't seen for decades. I'd say this happened at least half a dozen times, thousands of miles from home or from where I last saw that person.

It was such a weird feeling, especially if that person had been a homebody back then.

What was even weirder was that we would even recognize one another after all that time. Shades of the Twilight Zone.
 
braumeister said:
Classic example: You meet a new girlfriend/boyfriend, and they drive a particular model and color car. Suddenly you start seeing that color car everywhere.
Click to expand...

No that's just they are stalking you ;)
 
Back about 1985 we went to St. Croix for a week when DS (about 4-5) was staying with grandparents.

On the beach at the resort we saw a young one about about the same age and started talking with his mother.

Turns out they lived around the corner from us in Worcester, MA, and DW and the mom recall seeing each other at the local Friendly's. Small world.
 
W2R said:
Years ago, when I was traveling all over the world for various reasons, I would often run into someone I hadn't seen for decades. I'd say this happened at least half a dozen times, thousands of miles from home or from where I last saw that person.

It was such a weird feeling, especially if that person had been a homebody back then.

What was even weirder was that we would even recognize one another after all that time. Shades of the Twilight Zone.
Click to expand...


My version of this...transiting thru the Frankfort Airport on my way to a gig in Portugal. Go to the Micky D's to grab a quick bite and the guy in front of me is ex neighbor from my subdivision. He had been at Nortel when they went belly up and was now doing networking in Eastern Europe.

Talked for maybe 10 minutes and found out we also had been on the same flight over just hadn't seen each other.
 
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Bamaman said:
My wife and I were walking down the street after getting off a cruise ship in Warnemuende, Germany.

We ran into my sister and brother in law on the town square at a flea market. We hadn't seen'em in 6 months.

It's a small world.
Click to expand...

So, you and your sister live in the US, you didn't know your sister was visiting Germany at the same time, and you ran into each other? Is that it? If that's the case, then yeah, that's pretty amazing.
 
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