chgoeditor

A friend of mine had two near-death travel experiences within a couple years of one another. In the first instance, he and his bride had to cut short their honeymoon. A day or two later, everyone in the group they'd been traveling with was killed*. A couple years later he was staying in the Marriott World Trade Center on Sept. 11... As I understand it, those back-to-back experiences really caused him to reexamine his life priorities.

* Deliberately obscuring the details here, since it's really his story to tell, not mine.

bighunter120

thank you for this

pinworm

If doing a set of 10 flips, the results could be mixed, all heads, or all tails. Because the odds are 50/50 each flip and bear no relation to past flips, it is quite possible to get all heads. Random is random. Out of a possible 3 results, are the odds not 33% for each one in a set of 10?

KurtVH

No. Because there are 2 possible outcomes in each of ten independent events, the probability of ten heads in a row is 0.5^10 or 0.0009765625 or 1 in 1024.

MissJoeyDFW

I was at the Chicago airport sitting waiting for my flight. A man walked up to sit a couple of seats down from me and promptly spilled his soda all over the seat between the two of us, some of the soda landed on me. He profusely apologized, I laughed and told him not to worry about it. When he heard me laugh he said are you MissJoeyDFW (insert real name here) and I was shocked and said why yes I am. Fifteen years earlier we worked at the same company, he had to call the department I worked in several times a month and we spoke frequently over the course of a couple of years. His brother had been engaged to my sister-in-law so we would talk about that from time to time. We never met as he worked in another location several states away. However 15 years later he picked me out of a busy airport by my laugh. I am probably stating the obvious here but I am told I have a distinctive laugh.

painintheuk

I was doing some work for a financial organization in another country. Some of us (all from around the world) got to talking about people who inspired us. I was inspired by a girl that I went to high school with and went with to England for a year and still admire (even more now, though she was pretty amazing as a teenager) and who has now earned the Order of Canada.

My idol was one of my colleague's counsellors at summer camp!

Dr. PITUK.

djp98374

I have a few weird small world stories....

A few years ago i was on an ATL-SEA flight...I am sitting in the plane and I hear a voice---I am very very good at recognizing voices. I hear the voice and the person was a coworker of mine from about 5 years prior.

When I was married I went on a honeymoon cruise. The cruise director or assistant cruise director was someone who new me from college. I didnt remember her but she remebered me. At college I worked in a walk in math tutoring lab so I saw quite a few students. She was one of the students so it would be much easier for her to remember me than me remember her.

I have had a few other (though not necessarily travel related) of running into people from the past in unexpected places or of mutual friends---like this one--- at one previous job of mine in talking to a coworker it happened we were both from the same area where if we went through our siblings, their friends, or our friends from back home it was likely we had a common friend.

Thunderroad

Earlier this year I flew BKK-NRT-SEA-SFO in C on UA. Every leg of the way, I had the same seatmate. It struck me as an incredible coincidence, made all the more so since NRT-SFO would have been the better routing. (I chose it because it was available for me to use an SWU to upgrade from Y all the way. He was on a regular C ticket, but his company TA had routed him that way for some reason he didn't understand.) Nice guy, though we didn't chat much as I had a cold, so I wanted to sleep and wanted to avoid breathing in his direction to the extent possible.

CubsFanJohn

When we were at Disneyland 10 years ago we ran into people that lived three blocks from us.

When I was at Neuschwanstein with a friend about two years ago we ran into a couple who were from the same area in IL that I was so we started chatting. Turns out that they were friends with one of my best friends parents.

nrr

But (as the post after yours notes) the probability is 1/2^10 = 1/1024. Using a computer (and with the aid of a random number generator), to simulate tossing 10 coins, say 1,024,000 times (even more is better), of the 1,024,000 groups of 10 coins tossed, about 1000 of them will be all heads. [1,024,000 x (1/1024) = 1000, which is the expected number of times 10 heads will appear.]

vmsea

If you toss a coin ten times,
1. the odds of it being heads ON the TENTH toss is 1/2

2. the odds of it being heads 10 STRAIGHT times, is 1/1024

adamak

I'd meet someone from my Hong Kong highschool class each time I transit through NRT. And these friends don't live in HK anymore. Most are from Australia, Europe, US...etc. That happened about 6 times through the decades.

CMK10

I flew down to Miami for the inaugural Miami Marlins baseball game this year and I was walking down Ocean Drive in Miami Beach...minding my own business...when I hear someone go "hey Charles!". I turn around and I see someone I went to High School with (in New York, mind you). She was working as a server at a Johnny Rockets. How she recognized me when we never ran in the same circles, it's been 9 years, I've lost 30 pounds, grew a beard and now wear glasses I don't know. We had a nice chat though.

ijkh

Ran into a childhood friend from Los Angeles in Paris. I had not seen her for years until right in front of the Venus de Milo at the Louvre. There was a familiar face. We recognized each other instantly. That day we hung out and had memorable chocolate ice cream on Ile Saint-Louis. Then we parted ways. I haven't seen her since.

I still remember that chocolate ice cream cone.

Ryvyan

I was going to meet my friend for dinner in Tokyo but my phone died before we could arrange for a time.

I remember her recommending this store and as I was walking to this particular store, she walked out carrying some food. It was creepy because of the coincidence in timing and the fact that this happened in Tokyo.

--

I was also running late for a tour in Edinburgh and was the last on the bus. The only seat available was someone from the same country as me (tiny little island) and it was a lovely coincidence because it turns out that we are quite similar and so we chatted about everything.

Later another day in the city, I bumped into two other Singaporeans. Another lovely coincidence, or maybe we just like travelling?