:D I did that my first time in London and about got flattened by a double decker bus. Thank God for horns ;)

Works both ways. Similar thing happened to me in Athens, Greece.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52035

I didn't "misconnect" strictly speaking, but I think that was pretty darn close... :)

Not myself, but my parents friends from NZ were on one of their recent RTWs back in London in June '05 and she forgot her jacket on the way to the tube one morning. So they headed back to the hotel to pick it up.

Apparently while on the way back, a few malcontents decided it was a fine time to blow up the station where they otherwise would have been standing. If not for her jacket, there's a good chance they would have been in the middle of it.

And I thought rolling a backhoe down a hill was a big adventure adventure post-75.

I was in St Louis back in April, exactly a week before the earthquake hit.

An armed gang of crackheads fired into our house five times while we were in it, the breeze from a passing bullet lifting the hair in my husband's bangs. I'd call that close. A 20,000 pound oak tree fell on our next house while we were in it, and one of the limbs that slammed through the roof actually pushed my husband forward toward me in the direction of the kitchen. I'd call that close.

In 1972 the Howard Johnson sniper in New Orleans supposedly gunned down 19 people. (I say supposedly because some of the shots may have been friendly fire, memory fades now.) I had to walk past the Howard Johnson every day to go to work 1981-1982. My mom said, you guessed it: "Don't walk near the Howard Johnson." I probably made my mom very sad with my recklessness but I'd call that "not close."

Bazillions of people walk past, stay in, or have meetings in big hotels in big cities. We may get a little shiver of mortality but it doesn't mean we were really that close. It does give you a funny feeling though, doesn't it?

A friend of mine told me a story of her dad having a real close call when she was a kid (which would make it some time in 1970s). He was flying somewhere on business and sitting near the gate started reading a book that he got totally involved in and he missed the boarding of his flight which crashed. This was way before cell phones so he didn't think to call his wife to tell her he got re-booked to the next flight and for several hours she thought he died in the crash. My friend told me ever since then he called his wife before and after every single flight.

I've never had a flying related close call, my two close calls were losing control of my bike riding on the shoulder of the road and swerving into the car lane in the short span between cars (instead of into a car) and also many many moons ago losing control on a wet road of my rented car which turned out to have had bald tires and going off the highway into a field on the side of the road when half a mile further down it would have been a sharp drop off a cliff on the same side of that highway.

Ever since introduction of e-fares, my common weekend trips were out Saturday back Monday or Tuesday morning. I'm in SFO my parents used to be near EWR, so I'd taken United 93 EWR-SFO on Monday or Tuesday mornings a few times in 1999/2000/2001 time frame. That one really gave me pause.

I was slated to leave London on December 20/21, 1988. I chose the earlier date because I had not seen my wife in 3 weeks. I flew out on Pan Am 103 the day before it went down. I still have the ticket stub someplace. I think this is the reason my wife is adamant that I call her before and after each flight.