The odds always seem to be stacked against us. However, there are those times when someone hits that one-in-a-million chance. Though it might seem as if those moments are rare, these unbelievable stories from Redditors suggest otherwise. Who knows who might be next!
1. One For The History Books
My husband and I visited our old hometown and went to a used book store we used to frequent. I picked up a familiar title with nostalgia and flipped it open to find a school student’s ID card. I couldn't believe my eyes. The name and photo on it was my husband’s.
His mom had donated books to that store many years before we all moved away from that area. He must have been using it as a bookmark and forgotten. That book was sitting on the shelf for nearly a decade, untouched, waiting for me to come along and pick it up. Bizarre.
2. A World Away
My friend was a merchant mariner. One time, he'd been out a while, and we knew he was heading to Dubai but didn't know where he'd be after that. Four months went by and nobody had heard from him. His neighbor, who I was friends with, got married and went to Thailand for his honeymoon. He texted me one day and said, "You aren't gonna believe this".
He said he asked a local where a good spot to eat was that tourists wouldn't be at. The guy took him 30 minutes from the beach to some dive bar/restaurant with no sign, and no clearly marked entrance. He said it looked so shady he was afraid he was about to meet his doom.
He went in, and it was a legitimate restaurant. He ate, drank, and went to the bathroom. Out walked my friend. My neighbor took a picture and sent it to me to confirm he was okay.
3. Heading Over The Edge
I was riding my bicycle on a commercial fishing pier as a kid. I lost control. The edge had a 20-foot drop to open rocks at low tide. I tried to stop myself from going over by planting my feet on the edge of the pier, but I knew my bike was too heavy. Somehow, the bike stopped halfway over at a 45-degree angle.
However, the seat was now in the small of my back, preventing me from getting off, and I couldn't budge to get the bike back up. A fisherman ran over to help me, and we decided he would pull me as hard as he could, and I'd let the bike fall. I jumped to the side as he pulled me back to the pier, and it worked. However, my bike was still there, not moving at all.
When I examined what had happened, there was a piece of rebar sticking out from the edge of the pier bent upwards in an L shape. It passed diagonally through the spokes of my front tire and completely wedged my bike in place. It was the ONLY spot on the 300-foot-long pier with ANYTHING sticking out.
I most certainly did not stop myself and my bike from going over.
4. Some Lucky Lake Trash
Years back, my best friend and I went swimming at a lake. He was so excited to get in the water that he left his phone and wallet in his pocket and lost both. The lake gets deep quickly and is very muddy. We looked and looked, but the water was too deep. About a month went by, and we were swimming at the lake again.
Being a jokester, I was going to dive down to find some lake trash and tell him I found his wallet. I was bobbing around looking for stuff with my toes along the bottom of the lake. I touched something, and my blood ran cold because it’s super scary to touch things in the water. But the joke was going to happen, no matter how lame.
I grabbed it with my toes, handed the trash from my toes to my hand, and swam up for air, holding the trash above me so that it would dramatically surface first. As my ears emerged from the water, I heard my friend say, “Are you [messing] with me?” I looked in my hand overhead and, unbeknownst to me, was triumphantly holding up my friend’s lost wallet.
5. A Billion To One Bite
I took a summertime organic chemistry class. It was one month of classes five days a week, then a three-week break, then another month for the second semester. After the break, I reached into the box in my closet to grab the textbook where I had hidden it. I felt a sharp poke in the corner of my little finger at the cuticle of the nail bed.
I was running late to class, so I thought nothing of it. But that's when the nightmare began. I became ill with profuse sweating and nausea during the day, then severely ill into the night with vomiting, diarrhea, and swollen adenoids. I went to the ER the next morning, and they ran every test they could. Two days later, I started having trouble breathing and went to the ER again.
My heart was swollen, and my lungs and kidneys were swollen, too. Doctors kept me for two days running tests, and after two days, let me go as everything was going back to normal. Then, I began pooing what appeared to be a white paste, and this went on for two days. Afterward, I noticed that my tongue and the lining of my mouth were almost purple in color.
I had a red streak from the tip of my little finger that extended up to my bicep. I went back to the ER, and the doctor said he had no clue, but maybe I had been bitten by something venomous. I then thought about the day that the symptoms started and went to that box in my closet. Sure enough, there was a little black spider in the box.
I asked one of my professors about it, and he told me the county Health Department had an entomology office not far from campus, so I captured the little spider and went on over. The doctor there told me it was just a grass spider, and there was absolutely no way it could have envenomated me for three reasons.
He said they have curved mandibles so they can't hit the human skin; they have soft mandibles, so even when they manage to strike the skin, the mandible will turn and not break the surface, but most importantly, their venom, which digests the proteins that stretch between the cell walls of animals gets bound to platelets in the human bloodstream and is almost instantly neutralized.
I showed him where the bite was, as evidenced by the red streak, and sure enough, it was in the corner of the nail bed in the very soft tissue of the cuticle where the spider could actually get a strike. He asked if I had some kind of platelet disorder. I made a quick call to the hospital I worked at in the evenings, and sure enough, I had donated platelets the evening before being bitten.
It was at that point that the entomologist started hyperventilating and asking all kinds of questions. He was low-key freaking out. He kept repeating that this was a billion to billion to one event, and he'd never heard of it before. He ended up getting me to sign some papers so he could have my medical records and published a paper on it.
The white paste that I pooped for three days was the epithelial lining of my entire digestive tract which came out as white pasty-looking individual cells. By the end of the month, everything was back to normal like none of it had ever happened.
6. The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Many years ago, I had a terrible day when my then-girlfriend broke up with me. Then, I did terribly on a final exam for a college class, I lost my wallet, and, finally, as I was doing the Charlie Brown sad walk back home, some random branch broke off a tree as I was walking on the sidewalk underneath it.
The darn thing fell on top of me, hit me square across the shoulder, and knocked me to the ground. I just burst out laughing because it was all so ridiculous.
7. Identity Crisis
I was almost taken out in a case of mistaken identity. A guy came chasing after my car on the highway, waving his firearm out the window. He eventually got in front of me, blocked my car, stopped his car, and got out. He came right up to my window, pointed the piece right at my head, looked me in the eyes, and said, "Sorry. Wrong chick".
He then got back in his car and drove away. I still have no idea who he was or who the "right chick" was.
8. Crazier Than The Average Bear
I was camping in the mountains, and a yearling had been checking out our camp. My friends all went to the bathroom, and one friend left her waist pack with her insulin and glucose meter in her tent. The bear broke into her tent and ran off with the pack. I followed the bear. I politely asked the bear to drop the bag.
The bear and I were both surprised because the bear listened. I then asked if I could trade the pack for a stick. I used the stick to distract the bear and grab the pack. The bear sat and examined the stick. I was very lucky not to be mauled. I took the pack and backed away slowly.
I gave my friend her slightly chewed pack with her meds so we could avoid going to the hospital. That's when the craziest thing happened. We found out my friend was highly allergic to black bear saliva. She ended up in the ER anyway.
9. Life On The Most Wanted List
I was contacted by the FBI in regards to a criminal on “The Most Wanted List”. There were so many coincidences in our lives that the agents thought that I had to know where he was. They grilled me for a couple of hours trying to get information, but I had never heard of the guy. It was incredible.
We lived two streets apart as kids, attended the same elementary, middle, and high schools, and were members of the same church. He was three years older than me, so we never met at school, and his family attended church during a different time slot. We both studied French at the same university.
As language tutors, we worked in the same office and had the same boss and general phone number. The age difference kept us from ever meeting, and he switched from French to business before I got there. We both did a church missionary service in the same part of France, and even lived at the same address twice.
Our time in France never overlapped, and those mission apartments changed tenants every couple of months. When we both lived in Salt Lake, we lived in the same apartment complex. He held up an armored car outside of a movie theater on a Monday morning, getting away with a lot of cash and taking out the driver.
I was working the overnight shift at a grocery store from Sunday night to Monday morning on that exact morning. The theater and the grocery store shared a parking lot. Every six months or so, the FBI checks in with me.
10. Say Whaaat?
I underwent a surgical procedure called a stapedectomy to improve the significant hearing loss in my good ear. Instead, I ended up completely deaf. My surgical ENT said this had only happened to five patients in the entire US. I don't know how true that was, but hey, lucky me.
11. A Date With Destiny
I took care of my late father for the final two years of his life. He had Alzheimer’s and pulmonary fibrosis, among other issues, so we had a lot more bad days than good. In the summer of 2019, I took my dad out for a “date” one day to a historic old pharmacy that had phenomenal milkshakes, one of his favorite foods in the world.
It was one of Dad’s increasingly rare good days, where he chatted merrily with me about all sorts of old memories. I felt like I had my dad’s former self back for just a little while. We had such a wonderful time that I intended to take him there again soon. However, it ended up being our last “date”.
For most of the remainder of that year, Dad declined too much for me to take him out for anything other than very short grocery trips or appointments. The following year, we entered the pandemic, and in January of 2021, my father passed.
That day in 2019 ended up being the last truly happy day I had with him and the last fun outing he ever got to experience. But that's not the end of the story. Three months after he passed, I met a wonderful man online, and we decided to try a first date.
He lived three hours away, but wanted me to be comfortable, so he volunteered to drive to my town. He looked online for an appealing restaurant, and excitedly told me about this really neat historic pharmacy we could go to. We went on a very crowded day and had to wait quite a while for a table.
The waitress sat us at the EXACT same table where I sat with my dad nearly two years earlier! I was even in the same seat. Three months later, we got engaged at that pharmacy.
eberhard grossgasteiger, Pexels
12. A Jewel In The Mud
I lost an earring diving in a deep mountain creek. I paddled in the water over where it fell out, and I shouted, “Watch this,” to my girlfriend and dove down 10 feet to the bottom. I blindly grabbed a bunch of tiny river rocks in my fist, swam to the surface, and held my fist high triumphantly. I swam to my girlfriend and opened my hand.
It was there with the river rocks!
13. Without A Hitch
When I was a teenager, I picked up a hitchhiker. Then, a few years later, the same guy picked me up when I was walking after I ran out of gas. I never saw him before or after those two occasions.
14. What Happened Was Truly Nuts!
I had a vasectomy. It was only two hours before it all went wrong, even though I was following all the post-procedure stuff. I was lying in bed and had been feeling a weird twinge/pulling sensation for a bit, and finally put the tablet down to get a look down my shorts. The doctor said there might be swelling, but I wasn’t quite prepared for what I saw.
My sack had increased in size to about an orange, and my lower abdomen was swelling as well. There was a black/blue bruise that was spreading down my leg and up into the abdomen. I started to Google stuff and had my wife call the doctor. She finally got a hold of the night attendant, and he told her it was normal.
I tried to relax and get my mind off of things, but I was a bit anxious, to say the least. I checked again about an hour later, and my balls had grown to the size of a small cantaloupe. My junk now looked like a furry, zombified Q-bert. I had never had a panic attack before, but my brain decided that now would be a good time to introduce that into my repertoire.
My arm went numb, the world was spinning. I was struck by an impending sense of doom, and my heart felt like it was going to beat through my chest. Thinking I was currently well along in the process of losing my life, I had my wife call for help. By the time EMS got there, I felt much better, so I told them my wife would take me to the hospital.
I arrived at the ER and they confirmed that indeed my junk was messed up. They gave me some morphine right after the sonogram. In the chaos, however, I neglected to inform them I had just taken some pain meds. I was puking and feeling like I was falling into myself and other fun stuff I’d rather not endure again. Oh, but it gets worse.
I had to wait a bit for surgery, so they gave me some antibiotics beforehand to get that round of meds started. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that I was allergic to sulfa antibiotics. For whatever reason, the antibiotics gave me a male yeast infection. The doctor said that the possibility of the initial complications alone was somewhere in the range of 0.001%, let alone the rest of that nightmare.
15. Zapped
I was (indirectly) struck by lightning. While I was doing the dishes one day, lightning hit a tree near the wellhead. The strike exploded the tree, fried the well, and gave me a jolt that made my metal fillings so hot they burned my tongue. Other than that, I was fine.
16. Déjà View
I moved into my first apartment with my then-wife. It was an older apartment, built in the 70s, but it looked decent enough. It had a beautiful view of the lake and was on the third floor with only two short flights of stairs. It was a little shabby, but we were elated just to have a place of our own. We both worked nights, so we were sleeping during the daytime.
One day, while I was sleeping, I heard the loudest crash. I had five cats, so my worst-case scenario was that they dropped our new 55-inch plasma that was in the living room. It turned out my entire living room ceiling had collapsed. I panicked and screamed for my wife. She was disoriented, but I was frantic doing a count of my cats. One was missing.
Luckily, she was safe under the couch. Everyone was good. We yelled at the apartment company to give us a new place to live. They complied, and within a few hours, we were moved into another building on the first floor, in a “renovated apartment” with another absolutely amazing view of the lake.
By this time, it was already almost Christmas. The Christmas trees were up, the snow was falling, and the storms were brutal. With the few things that survived the ceiling collapse, we tried our best to turn our “renovated apartment” into a cozy home. Come Christmas Eve, my wife and I were still pretty jumpy, especially with the horrible storm outside.
She asked we bring all the cats, the presents and the tree into our bedroom. I complied. About an hour after I put everyone inside, I heard a bang. I told my wife to stay put. I poked my head out, and I saw that the ceiling dipped and was going to collapse again. I told her that it was happening again, and to grab her stuff so we could go.
We did. But I really couldn’t believe it happened to me twice.
17. That’s What I Like
A Pepsi case at a grocery store had a text-to-win contest to see Beyoncé in concert. I figured why not, sent a text, and entered. A few weeks later, I got a text back from the same number that told me I won the grand prize! I ended up winning two tickets to Beyoncé’s The Mrs Carter Show World Tour in Brooklyn and $500 on a Visa gift card.
I used the $500 for bus tickets and a hotel down the street from Barclays. The seats were awesome, and it is something I’ll never forget!
18. Yas Queen
I was on a road trip with my cousins in the 80s. One of them kept playing the same song over and over by rewinding the tape and playing it again. The song was “Another One Bites The Dust”. After three plays in a row, the driver pulled out the tape, said, “Enough,” and turned on the radio. Famous last words.
Sure enough, that song was playing on the radio right then.
19. Double Whammy
My friend had two sets of monochorionic-monoamniotic twins—the rarest kind of twins—in back-to-back pregnancies. These identical twins share the same amniotic sac and the same placenta. "Mono-Mono" or "MoMo" twins happen in about 1% of identical twin pregnancies and less than 0.1% of all pregnancies.
20. Grandpa Was Almost A Goner
Weeks before my grandfather’s 93rd birthday, he was finishing a day of yard work on his farm. He tripped while getting off the lawnmower, and it rolled on top of him (blades turned off, luckily).
He was pinned under it long enough that he was about to slit his own throat to put himself out of his misery, as opposed to freezing overnight beneath a lawnmower. Just before he was about to end himself, he happened to see a crowbar in the yard that he dropped earlier. It was just in his reach, and he grabbed it.
He proceeded to lift the lawnmower off of himself with it, slide himself out from beneath, crawl back onto the mower with broken limbs, ride the mower up to the house, crawl up the stairs, grab his phone to call my dad, and say, "I need a ride to the hospital. I think I hurt myself".
21. It Came Through In The Clutch
My mom’s car was taken when I was a kid. The next day, my dad and I went to the pharmacy and saw her car parked in the lot. She drove a standard, and the thieves didn’t know how to work the clutch, so they didn’t get too far. Unfortunately, the interior was trashed, and the clutch was ruined.
22. A Fateful Friendship
I was introduced to a friend of a friend in the town where I lived. We three spent several hours together, and I left thinking I'd like to get to know her better. I told my friend, and he said he could tell we would be friends. Four weeks later, my husband was offered a trip to Paris for work. They were going to pay for a nice room and enough to feed both of us, so of course I went!
On a day he had no meetings, we decided to see the Louvre. We were walking from the Petit Palais, and as we were about to cross the street, I did a double take. It was her, about to cross the street, walking towards us! She also had not known she was coming to Paris! I still think about the odds.
23. Hometown Happenings
I moved from Ohio to Texas back in 2006 to be with my now-wife. I was interviewing for my first career job, and one of the interviewers was not only from Ohio, but she had graduated from my university, AND she went to the same high school as both of my parents—which was two hours away from that university—just a couple of years before them.
24. Who’s Who?
I once got called in to help figure out what was going on with some patient records. It turned out that two people in the same small suburb had the exact same date of birth and name and had been admitted to the hospital on the exact same day. They had never met each other despite immigrating from the same country, and their name was fairly unusual in their homeland.
25. A Supersized Surprise
I once met a guy who had been born on the same day as me at the same hospital, and we both had similar birth names. We also weighed the same, and we found out later that we were born within minutes of each other. Also, we were both born six weeks early, and we had the same color eyes and hair.
Our moms worked at the same Walmart, and that’s how we met.
26. I Haven’t Got A Shoe
A coworker’s husband had bought the wrong size shoes, and for some reason, they couldn’t return them. So, they asked me if I wanted to buy them. It was the one time in my entire life that someone asked me if I wanted to buy a pair of shoes at work. A few hours later, the sole of my shoe came off. So, yeah, I bought the shoes.
27. Like Mother, Like Daughter
My mom gave birth to me after the sudden onset of labor at 37 weeks and six days gestation. She had a C-section because I was breech and was born at 9:48 AM. But here's the weird part.
I gave birth to my child after the sudden onset of labor at 37 weeks and six days gestation, had a C-section because my daughter was breech, and she was born at 9:48 AM.
28. I Couldn’t Believe My Eyes
I was swimming about 20 yards away from shore, where it was about 15 feet deep, in Lake Erie with my glasses on so I could see. A wave runner rushed past, and the wake knocked off my glasses. I made a few dives and tried to mark my location with landmarks. I swam to shore, explained what happened, and asked people if they had a mask or goggles I could borrow.
Someone lent me their goggles. I swam out and dove about 20 times. I decided I was going to take two more dives, then end it and drive home to Chicago without being able to see. I went down, and a bass swam under me. I decided to follow it since I had never been so close to one other than fishing. It swam over my glasses.
I made it to the surface with my glasses in my hand.
29. All In The Family
When I turned 23, I met my two biological half-brothers. They showed me a photo of them with our father, and in it, they were all smiling. They wanted to show how the three of them were all missing a front upper middle tooth. When I was seven, I lost my upper middle front tooth, making it all four of us.
30. The Accidental Hero
My son used the headrest to break a window to pull three children out of cars in two different accidents, both driven by women, exactly three months apart. The first accident occurred one day after he filmed “Stop the Bleed” training available through a local hospital.
The first accident was caused by speed, and the SUV flipped on its roof right in front of him. He also got the mom out. The second one was caused by a man who fell asleep coming home from his third shift, crossed a double yellow, and hit a woman taking her three kids to school head-on.
The woman needed the jaws of life to be extracted, and after getting her kids out, my son checked the male driver and held his hand until EMTs could get there.
31. Trading Places
I started dating a woman about a year after my divorce. After dating for about four months, I learned that the man my ex was dating had the same last name as my girlfriend. There was no relation, and it was not a super common name. We ended up marrying our respective SOs, so my ex-wife and current wife essentially swapped last names.
32. Catch Of The Day
I accidentally caught a guitar pick at a My Chemical Romance concert 12 years ago. I was standing there and had my hand at my side with my fingers, kind of halfway to a fist. I felt something hit my hand, looked down, and it was just there. It was at the amphitheater in Bonner Springs, KS, so not a small crowd either.
33. Some Eerie Errands
We went to Woodman's grocery store, where we bumped into a family that were friends of ours, which is not that improbable. But then, we went to Aldi; I wanted something only they sold. We bumped into the same family again, which was weird.
Afterward, we went to Lowe’s, and now I was getting a little freaked out because the same family was also shopping there. This is all in the course of four hours in the northwest Chicago area, so it's a big area, not some small rural town.
34. The Luck Of The Irish
My friend was going to Ireland to visit her extended family for the first time and invited me along. We had a great time meeting her aunts and uncles, seeing the beautiful sights, etc. On our last night in Ireland, the family all got together for dinner.
Her cousin had been traveling that week and was only in town for one night, so she and her boyfriend swung by to say hi and bye. They left for the airport to NYC, and we went to sleep, getting up at 4 AM to catch our own flight to NYC. Two days later, I had to be in NYC for a job interview.
I wasn't familiar with the Wall St area, so I went extra early just in case I couldn't find it. But as luck would have it, I found it with no problem and had 40 minutes to spare. I had no idea what to do. I considered getting food but didn't want to risk staining my clothes or having an upset stomach or anything, so I wandered around a little until I stumbled on the Barnes & Noble bookstore.
Thinking this was perfect, I went in and walked slowly through the store, looking for somewhere to sit. There weren't any sort of private spaces on the first floor, so I found the escalator and started heading up. As I approached the halfway mark, I saw a young couple going down on the escalator. As our eyes met, we recognized each other.
It was my friend's cousin and her boyfriend. We chatted about how CRAZY this coincidence was. I was so full of optimism and confidence because of the “right place, right time” thing I nailed the job interview.
35. The Moroccan Moirai
A friend and I were in Tangier, Morocco and ran into a guy who used to live in my friend’s building in Portland, Oregon. The guy was retired and had left the US over two years prior, went to Asia, and traveled randomly the entire time until we happened to meet on a back street in North Africa.
We could have been in the same city and never seen him, but we happened to be on the same out-of-the-way street in a random city, in a random country. Weird.
36. Bad Luck Befell Us Both
I was driving to a friend's house when a huge tree fell on the road. My car passed under it as it was falling. So as soon as I could pull over, I called emergency services and messaged my friend to say I would be late. But there was something I didn't know.
When I got to his house, I found that his girlfriend's mom was in the car behind me, and the tree fell on her car. Luckily, she only had minor injuries, but one tree almost took us both out.
37. A Mouth Full Of Poo
A bird pooped in my mouth. I had the car door barely open while my boyfriend pumped gas. I was mid-sentence when a bird flew under the awning and dropped its load at the perfect angle to go through the barely open door, right into my mouth. Gross.
38. Coast To Coast Chaos
I was in Baltimore for the large East Coast earthquake that resulted in damage to the Washington Monument. It was major news because the East Coast rarely has earthquakes, let alone ones large enough to cause a commotion. That day, I was packing bags to take a trip back west to the Bay Area.
When I landed and got back to my parents’ house at about 11:30 PM, we were sitting having a drink, chatting, and felt a magnitude 3.0 to 4.0, which was normal for the Bay Area. I may be one of the few people ever to experience an earthquake on two different coasts of the US on the same day.
39. A Springtime Revelation
I lost a small pearl earring in the snow down the street from my boyfriend’s house. I was adjusting a scarf, and it flung out of my ear. I was sad because my grandmother got them for me. The next spring, my boyfriend flicked a joint into the woods.
He was paranoid it didn’t go out all the way, so he went to step on it. That's when he made a shocking discovery. Right next to his foot was the earring.
40. European Adventure
When I was in my early 20s, I was backpacking through Europe and couch surfed in a college dorm in Czechia. I went out with a local guy there in Prague and my phone died shortly after because I didn’t have the right plug-in for the socket.
He gave me a tour of the city and took me to this old underground bar. We drank and drank until, all of a sudden, he checked his phone and said he had to go NOW to catch the last bus home.
I had no idea how to get back to the college dorm, or even where I was, since we had walked all around the city for hours. I was SO sure I was going to have to sleep behind a dumpster or something. I was really plastered but I remember saying bye to him, walking down the street a little, and then a bus rolled up close to me.
It had a word that I recognized on it, and I thought maybe it would take me where I needed to go, so I got on it. Sure enough, it eventually stopped at the college I was sleeping at that night. I consider it one of the most miraculous things that has ever happened to me.
41. Head-On Collision
A colleague and I were having Nerf fights in the office for a while. One day, I snuck around a corner, had a perfect bead on him, and he whipped around and fired at the same time I did. The projectiles hit each other head on half way between us. No one else was around to see it.
42. It Was Flippin’ Crazy!
I saw a pickup truck hit the center divider of a freeway, launch into the air, do a 345-degree turn, flip, land on its two left tires, drive tilted about 50 feet, roll back on to its tires, and drive off like nothing happened. The entire sequence happened in about five seconds at 80 mph.
The truck missed the merge from the center freeway and was driving through the center section of the freeway that was marked off. It wasn’t fast enough, and the right side of the truck caught the divider wall in the perfect spot and flipped in the air. The truck came to a stop after it flipped back on its tires.
I was at the very front of traffic watching this happen. I had never seen anything like it before. I was going to call for help, but the truck started up again and drove off.
43. Nature At Its Best
I was out in a boat on a lake trying to catch fish, not having any luck. I saw an osprey dive out of a tree into the water. The osprey came up with a fish and started to fly away. A bald eagle dove out of another tree and went after the osprey mid-flight. The osprey dropped the fish, and the eagle continued to rip into the osprey.
Then, a huge raven dropped out of a third tree, plucked the falling fish out of mid-air, and flew away with it. I'll never see that again.
44. Jackpot!
My son found a token on the ground. He put it in one of those games where it slides down a ramp and you try to get it into a slot at the end of a rotating wheel. He hit the jackpot. Well over 8,000 tickets and he was only three at the time.
We played for a bit longer, and he wanted to play the giant spin the wheel game. He hit the jackpot there on his first try. For 10,000 tickets, he got a Disneyland ticket. His mom and I paid for two more and we went on a trip.
45. It Was Picture Perfect
I took a job in a somewhat remote area of northeast China. I had two roommates, one American and one Canadian. We were part of a handful of foreigners out of about two million Chinese in that area. Ten years later, I was back in the USA. I was dating a girl who was going on a girl's trip to Mexico.
She and her girlfriends went out to a bar and got to talking with another group of people. One of the guys there started showing photos from his travels and, lo and behold, there I was. He was my roommate from China from the decade before. Small world.
46. That’s The Ticket!
I bought a house in a small town in Ohio, about two hours from Columbus. My wife and I decided to go to a random Ohio State game since we have never been and got tickets off of StubHub. When we got there, we ended up sitting next to the people we bought our house from.
47. Secrets Revealed
My sister’s husband was taking classes at a community college in their city. He met a girl in his class who told him she was from the same small town where he and my sister, along with my parents, used to live. They talked some more—and it got weirder.
He learned that her mom and stepfather worked at the same place as our dad. He mentioned my dad’s name to her and she said, “That’s weird, that’s my stepdad’s name”. And that is how we learned about my dad’s affair and his other family.
48. Vacation Vibes
In 2006, I bought a travel guide to Costa Rica from a used bookstore to prepare for an upcoming trip. Inside the book was a copy of a shipping receipt from someone who'd ordered the book online a few years earlier. I did a double take when I saw the shipping address on the receipt.
The previous owner of the book had not only lived at my address but IN MY SPECIFIC APARTMENT, and presumably also took a vacation to Costa Rica.
49. Medical Mixup
While attempting to get medical treatment, the doctor’s office ran a pharmacy report on my medical history and prescriptions. My terminally ill brother, whose full name was only two letters different from mine and we had the same address and phone number, was on a number of narcotics at the time. Through their search, they pulled up HIS report and thought it was mine.
They yelled at me and tossed me out of the office, saying I was just looking for dope. I was mortified and very upset. They wouldn’t listen to me when I said it was my brother and not me. I ended up calling the pharmacy board, and they called the doctor and explained that since we had the same address, phone number, and an extremely similar name, they had to search by social security number.
The doctor felt horrible and gave me free treatment, and now he tells that story at conferences he goes to. It was crazy.
50. The Odds Were Against Him
A buddy and I went to the mall to see the premier of Star Trek 3. To pass some time, my friend was in line at the magazine stand to buy a lottery ticket. I pulled him out of line to look at a magazine cover. He got back in line with one person extra getting in line ahead of him.
That one person who got ahead of him ended up with an "instant win lottery ticket" for $1,000. What are the odds?
Sources: Reddit,
