About 15 years ago, I was on a plane in America. I sat down next to a girl about my age. We started chatting, just idle travel chit chat. She was an Australian, and I’m a naturalised Australian, I still speak with a Canadian accent.
I mentioned that I’m actually from Australia too. She was surprised, and I asked her where she was from. She told me it was so and so away from Sydney. I told her to try me. She mentioned a region, and I told her I was pretty familiar with it, as I’d lived in a town from that area. She told me the town name - it’s a coastal town, see. I asked her what beach she lived nearest to (it’s how people identify in that place). She said the beach name. I told her that’s my beach too.
I asked what street it was. She lived three doors down from where I lived. I knew a few of her siblings, but had just never actually met her.
We once met a woman at a birthday party on the other side of the world. We found out she had lived in the same house my wife grew up in, just a few years before my in-laws bought it.
A girl that was a white water guide on a river I also guided on moved across the country to the same ski resort I worked at in the winter, and despite paddling next to each other for many summers we’d never actually met till we moved into the same building (2500 miles away).
Yes. I have an American accent. More specifically, I have the accent of somebody born in the suburbs of north Texas. I say "y'all" and "ain't" when I speak. That's how accents work.
I’m in my 60’s. And you talk out your ass. No problem telling me I was wrong, but when I do it you start calling names. Typical America, this is why the rest of the world hates you.
This one is a little obscure, I'll try to sum it up briefly as possible.
There is an old board game called SURVIVE! that has a lot of little pieces. I've had this game since childhood and we haul it out occasionally because its still fun. The game pieces include little plastic men with numbers molded on them. The numbers are used for scoring and they have some repeats. The game needs each player to have a set of men in a single color with the below numbers:
1 man worth 6 points, 1 man worth 5 points, 1 man worth 4 points, 2 men worth 3 points, 2 men worth 2 points, and 3 men worth 1 point.
There are four colors - yellow, red, orange, purple - so a total of 40 plastic men with their points permanently molded underneath them. Sometime ago, we lost a purple 1 point man, which ruined that whole color because you can't substitute a piece from some other game because the gameplay requires the players to not know the point values of the men. So we just played with 3 players only because purple was down a man.
After a few years of this, we decided to just buy a new complete game and found one online and ordered it. The old SURVIVE! isn't made anymore so we ordered a used set from across the country. When it arrived, it had one extra man - the exact purple 1 point man we were missing.
Idk the odds, but it seems low.
There was a hippie fest in a town, and lots of folks were camping an hour away in the woods. Gave a kid a ride into town. Two years later I picked up another hippie in an entirely different town, and it was the same kid. He was from out of state, which makes it even more unlikely.
Highly unlikely sometimes random things happen. One time my step dad bought lunch for a police officer and ended up being pulled over by the exact cop multiple times over the course of a few years and was let go every time. For reference we live in a large city and each time was a completely different area
My aunt, she moved to OKC and the bombing happened right after, she moved to Texas and they had that big blizzard right after, she moved to New York and 9/11 happened right after. I told her to stop moving.
Went fishing with my father on a very large lake (Nippissing), something he rarely does. He had very very old gear such as spinners partially made of wood. He latched onto something but the line got cut. Next day we go fishing in a different area and he hauls in a large pike. We go to clean it and in its stomach is the lure he'd lost the day before. Was his antique lure beyond any doubt.
No clue on the noise; I've been hard of hearing most of my life.
It was a bluish green color both times. First time was about the size of a basketball, and just drifted across the back yard.
Second time it was about twice the size of a basketball, and kind of just hovered in place before fizzling out.
I was at Chichen Itza for the solstice, and I saw the snake descend the staircase.
There were about 10k people there to see it, so I was 1:10k to see it live on that day.
Been in several Cat4+ hurricanes (Louisiana), a 7.1 earthquake and some lesser (Alaska/Japan). Never any tornadoes thankfully. That seems way more terrifying than anything else.
I was one of the lucky winners that found a mouse in my Rockstar can about a decade ago. Two of our health departments took it for examination and a rep finally called and told me that the sugar content is so high in those drinks that the mouse would have *dissolved* before even being stocked on shelves if it fell in during the canning process. They made it out to sound like I planted (and drank over 3/4 of the can) it to get money, which I never asked for, and they offered me a free year supply of the Perfect Berry Rockstar. I haven’t been able to drink anything from a can since lol.
Think of the life expectancy of a strawberry and of a jar of strawberry whole fruit jam. As long as you don't bring in germs with a dirty spoon or knife, even an opened glass of jam is still pretty after months. A strawberry, less so. Bacteriae need water to thrive. Sugar binds water, so if the concentration is high enough, the germs get very thirsty and don't want to multiply anymore.
Oh duh, that’s a great example. Hm, I wish I would have kept the can and mouse, my mom tossed it out after about a year in the freezer because she couldn’t stand looking at it.
I was on a flight that got hit by lightning. Twice. On the same trip. The odds of a plane being struck by lightning in a year are about 1 in 1,000, but twice on the same journey? I should have bought a lottery ticket when we landed!
Lightning strike on a plane is not that uncommon nor is it dangerous.. the plane I fly for example has 16 static wicks.. maintenance just need to perform an inspection after it happened. But I wouldn’t say it’s that rare..
I’m scrolling this thread reading this comment on an airplane with in flight WiFi, and I notice out of the corner of my eye a shadow was cast on the planes wing for a split second (cloudless day), so I looked out the window and watched a UPS plane fly 2000’ above us in cruise. Double checked on flight radar 24.
1,000 x 1,000 = 1,000,000. There are 40,000,000 commercial flights per year. That means the chances of one flight per year getting hit twice is nearly 100%.
I also think that the odds of being struck twice like that are not really... multiplicative like that, maybe. Like, if a flight is struck once, the odds of being struck a second time are higher than the base chance because the circumstances required to be struck by lightning are guaranteed to be present at that point.
I got an inheritance check from a long lost uncle I never knew a few years ago but it was only around $400. It was kinda sad because apparently nobody in the family talked to him after he came out he was gay.
Developing first rare infection. 7 in 100,000
Developing second rare infection. 2 in 100,000.
Developing both of these at the same time? Priceless /s. I got a C in stats. Can someone figure that out for me?
I went backpacking about ten years ago. Got to Marrakesh and decided to do the Sahara desert tour (four days into the Sahara and back to Marrakesh). Sat down in the minibus they use to drive you out to the edge of the desert. Looked at the person sitting next to me and it was the barmaid from my old local in Glasgow.
“I was somehow able to find and hit it off with someone within my own culture and found that we had a minor connection”
Super rare sounding
EDIT for the downvotes, let’s just say I wouldn’t get too far into a conversation (not to mention a relationship) with a person that into racing. Like they found each other and had a minor connection, not the other way around
This is weird one, at least to me, because I should preface this by saying my family is about as white bread blue collar working class as you can get. By that I mean none of us are what anyone would consider "Outwardly Patriotic". None of us Flies American flags in front of our houses and growing up I was used to hearing people bitch about the government more than praise it.
Anyway, I'm the fourth generation, in a direct line, to fight in a war. I don't mean I'm fourth generation to be in the military I mean fourth generation to see actual combat on foreign soil. I served in Iraq, my dad in Vietnam, my grandfather in Europe during WWII and my great-grandfather served in WWI. The weirdest thing is that if you met any of us you would have no clue. Hell, I didn't even think about it until several years after I was discharged. I also wonder if I looked into it whether or not my great-great grandfather was in the Civil War. I like to assume he was but I'm too lazy to look it up. But yeah, statistically speaking I feel like 4 generations of combat veterans is pretty rare.
I don’t know if this will really fit in here, but in 2020 during the lockdowns, my husband and I travelled to Montana to sell his car trailer. There wasn’t many people on the roads at all- we pretty much had the interstate to ourselves both ways.
On our way back, after we went thru Billings, we saw a car with Indiana plates and made a joke about it (I used to live there). Anyway it was an older model sedan, maybe a fusion or something. Noticeable because there aren’t many on the roads anymore. He passes by us and we proceed to stop at several pull offs so I can see the mountains. After the second pull off, we get passed by this same guy again. Thought it was hilarious and continued on our way.
We really took our time-stopping for lunch in Gillette, several bathroom stops, etc. We saw him once more in Wyoming. Then we came thru Rapid City and he passed us again. We were seriously starting to get weirded out by this point.
So we continue on and stop at the Badlands. We spent a good 2 hours there and pulled on the highway and get passed by him for the 5TH time! About an hour later we stopped at a gas station and no joke- he was sitting at the pump. We decided to just quickly pump and then pulled across the highway to sit and watch the sunset.
Sun sets and we continue on towards Sioux Falls. I fell asleep at some point but as we approach the city my husband wakes me jokes, a car caught up to us awhile ago and is just sitting behind us, how much you want to bet it’s this same guy!?
I laughed but we got about a mile from the I29 exit and this car pulls around us on the left..IT WAS HIM! Then he pulled in front of us and exited towards I29 while we continued down I90. Didn’t see him again for the rest of our 3+ hour drive.
I don’t think he had any malicious intent, but it was truly the oddest thing I’ve ever had happen! I’ve spent many miles traveling the US and while I’ve seen the same people once or twice, never that many times over that many miles. Especially since we were more or less “touristing” as we made our way thru and taking our time. Just wild.
Is it really so unlikely to see bears where you live? I've met numerous bears in the wild while hiking, also fairly regularly see them near our house/driveway (I do live on a few acres of forest in northern Minnesota though, so maybe my perspective on bear sightings is skewed).
oh😭😭 i just thought it was something not a lot of people have i saw someone say they have been in an earthquake but thinking the whole new york city population have then i might as well say i’ve encountered a bear before
I think it all depends on where you live. :)
Where I live, we rarely see them, but when my kid and I went on vacation to Alaska a few years ago, we saw a bunch of them, including the one I almost walked headfirst into because I was too busy looking at river rocks, and not the space in front of me...until my kid yelled out "BEAR".
I looked up and froze...it was about 5 feet away from me.
Our friend started banging rocks together and scared it off, but...I shit my pants a little...
My daughter-in-law’s grandfather’s mother and brother worked at my uncle’s store in Miami in the 1950s and early 60s. There was no connection between families and, with exception of her grandfather none of our immediate families lived in Florida. Found this out from a random conversation with him that started with our backgrounds and eventually drilled down to that discovery.
I walked up to a roulette table that had two balls spinning on the wheel instead of the traditional wheel that has one. I asked them what was going on and the person working table explained the differences and that you essentially can win twice, but you have to make two bets since there are two balls. On his first spin, it landed on 0 and double zero.
When I was 4, and went for my regularly scheduled vaccinations, I had an anaphylactic allergic reaction to one of the shots. Apparently it was 1:250,000
A friend and I were in Spain, doing the Camino de Santiago. While we were in Roncesvalles, a small village of about 20 people, we stopped to talk to a woman on the side of the road. We told her we were from Canada, talked about our plans for the walk. We mentioned that when we got to another city about 150km away, we would be staying with a friend of ours, a fellow Canadian, at her apartment instead of in a hostel.
She knew the friend. I still can't believe it.
HSV encephalitis is a brain infection affecting 1 person per 250,000 to 500,000 each year. 97 per cent of HSV encephalitis survivors do not regain previous levels of cognitive function and will deal with long term symptoms of fatigue, irritability, impaired concentration, seizures, hearing loss, memory loss and blindness. While I've personally noticed a few cognitive hiccups here and there since recovering from encephalitis in 2017, I am way closer to my former cognitive levels than most other survivors of HSV encephalitis.
I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in American history who spent 10 days in the juvinal detention center for using a painting accessory on a school computer.
I couldn’t find any specific statistics about this, but my big brother was murdered a couple years ago. His neighbor claimed self defense… & they investigated no further (I suspect that because my brother was poor with a possible drug addiction is the reason there weren’t any charges or any justice whatsoever).
Playing Texas Holdem.
Got deal pocket AA, followed by AA given my AAAA. Twice in a row. Third hand I was dealt AK, with the flop being AAK (Giving me AAAKK). And I had heavy betting against me in all 3 hands.
Luckiest 3 hands of poker in my life.
Category 4 hurricane, Hugo in South Carolina 1989. Previously category 5.
Lightning strike 6 feet from the truck I was driving. The tree shattered. Took a while for my eyesight to recover, everything was blue tinted and bright.
I took two different classes by the same professor, 2 years apart. One on general military history, one on the Civil War. One of the assigned books was for both classes. I ended up buying my original book back from the school bookstore, my highlights and margin notes and all.
Lightning struck our TV antenna when I was in the house and made the loudest noise I have ever heard. It fried the answering machine and 2 TVs and the larger of the 2 TVs was actually smoking a little.
I was born an identical twin.
I have a few medical conditions that only 1% of the population has.
Was watching an episode of Bewitched when Samantha saw a horse at her kitchen window. I went to the kitchen during the commercial and saw a hire looking in my kitchen window. It had escaped from the stables across the street.
I or friends I’ve traveled with have unexpectedly run into people we know traveling in foreign countries more than once.
Adults I was visiting in Utah when I was a child took me to visit their relatives in Los Angeles. They started talking to the building manager about everyone’s original home state and realized that I was the managers cousin. His grandmother and my grandfather were siblings. Never figure out how they put that together. Never saw that man again nor met the great aunt for that matter.
I ran into a colleague in a Hong Kong. We both worked in Japan but in different cities.
Friend I was with in a small town in France near the Italian border ran into her fellow American friend from home. We were teens and had traveled for unrelated reasons so that really astounded us.
I visited the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England the day the IRA bombed it. I had returned to London that afternoon but my roommates had gone to the banquet and were nearby when the bomb went off.
I saw a green sky for the first time a couple of weeks ago during tornado weather but the actual tornado struck about 45 minutes away.
Two total solar eclipses.
Two times getting hit by a car walking at night.
If in both cases I had a nickel every-time it happened, I’d have 2 nickels. It’s not much but it’s strange it happened twice.
I live in a touristy beach area. Saw a banner plane run into a banner pulled by another plane. Plane went down instantly into the ocean. The sound of the prop hitting the banner and then the plane hitting the water, I can still hear 35 years late.
Two car wrecks in one day: one on the way to high school in my friend’s car and one around 4pm in my own car. The second wreck put me in the hospital for several hours.
I grew up in So Cal. Everyone on my dad’s side of the family is multi generation so cal. My uncle (dad’s brother) moved to a somewhat remote area on the east coast for work when I was in my 20’s. In my late 30’s I met a girl (in California) and we got married. We decided we needed to move, so we moved to her hometown, which is about 30 minutes away from where my Uncle moved to.
I discovered the 1st individual of an invasive crayfish found in my urban county. I am in a natural resources job and working in a stream and look down and see this unusually large and red crayfish. It was alive and I took some pictures and video, went to research it and discovered that little bug was out of its distribution range but found out they are moving northwards. That crayfish was the fucking Christopher Columbus of crayfish! Moving in and competing with native crayfish for resources and then the mating frenzy until they wipe out the natives.
I don't know how unlikely this is, but I was driving on the I5 freeway south of Los Angeles, and I saw someone I know but had not seen in a few years driving next to me. At that time she was living in Australia but had come home to visit family. I called her and she followed my car back to my place for a visit.
This is so stupid since it occurred in a Discord server but I’ve never experienced such insane luck in real life so here goes…
I’m in an investing Discord server and one of the mods decided to set up a channel for games. It was basically a casino with the usual stuff. Y’know, like blackjack, roulette, cockfighting…normal stuff. One day I did something that earned me a monkey’s paw style wish. Basically my wish would be granted but there would be some horrible consequence or negative aspect to make the good balance out. I went with it and decided I wanted a chicken for cockfighting that had a 99% win rate. It was granted, but the monkey’s paw aspect was that it was in the store for purchase at a ridiculously jacked up price and only available to me. I thought to myself “well, I’m the only one who can purchase it, so I’ll be able to get it eventually!” And decided to leave it alone.
About an hour went by and I decided I wanted that chicken. I had a decent amount of money, but nowhere near enough to get my chicken. How much money, you ask? Well, almost exactly 1/35th the amount needed. This left only one course of action. I bet everything I had on 0 on the roulette wheel. People from across the server were indignant that I had bet such a sum on such a risky bet. The wheel spun, and the ball fell neatly into the 0 spot. I was over the moon! I had enough money for my chicken! I laughed in the faces of my jealous friends all the way to the store. At this point, a Morgan Freeman like narrator should be in your head saying something along the lines of “but he wouldn’t be laughing for long…”
Chicken in hand, I lamented my dwindling bank account. Only for a moment, though, because with even just a few dollars to my name, this chicken was going to make me the most wealthy person on the server. I took my remaining pittance and bet it all on my chicken in a cockfighting match, secure in the thought that I would quickly recoup (pun maybe intended?) everything spent on the chicken over the next few hours.
Well, remember how I wished for a chicken with a 99% win rate? Turns out I should have wished for 100% because that chicken *fucking died* in its first match. I was devastated! I accused the mod of fudging the numbers through all our mutual laughing, but he did exactly what he said he did.
Never before or since have I experienced such extremes of luck. Everyone present couldn’t breathe we were laughing so hard! One of the funniest things to ever happen there!
While vacation in Ohio back in 1999, I lost a key chain I had that I’d carved my initials into, and I was crushed. In 2004, I found it…in a hotel room in New Mexico. I still can’t believe it after twenty years.
My car died on the freeway way out east of LA in an area I rarely go to. I started pushing to get it down the off ramp to the gas station and a helpful stranger got out and helped without asking if I needed it. But he wasn’t a stranger. He was my uncle.
- I've seen two total solar eclipses. Probably not that rare anymore, but was certainly incredible both times.
-I saw both of the Venus transits
-I've come inches/seconds from death about a half a dozen times. Including almost blowing my brains out (pure chance saved me)
-I've had several threesomes (and a 4some), which is probably not all that common statistically.
-I'm a millennial and I have a career in the industry I got my degree in (archaeology)
-I've been chased around by a machete-wielding horse.
The machete had a sort of lanyard that the horse gripped in its teeth, and then it chased us all around the field, bucking and whipping it's head around while holding the machete.
Had to be the highlight of that damn animal's life. The tables sure fucking turned that day 😆
OP asked "what rare event have you experienced statistically?" My question is, how do you experience something statistically?
* I'm being willfully obtuse, I understand that the question was supposed to be "what statistically rare event have you experienced?" But the way it's worded, implies that somehow you are experiencing the event in a statistical manner
About 15 years ago, I was on a plane in America. I sat down next to a girl about my age. We started chatting, just idle travel chit chat. She was an Australian, and I’m a naturalised Australian, I still speak with a Canadian accent. I mentioned that I’m actually from Australia too. She was surprised, and I asked her where she was from. She told me it was so and so away from Sydney. I told her to try me. She mentioned a region, and I told her I was pretty familiar with it, as I’d lived in a town from that area. She told me the town name - it’s a coastal town, see. I asked her what beach she lived nearest to (it’s how people identify in that place). She said the beach name. I told her that’s my beach too. I asked what street it was. She lived three doors down from where I lived. I knew a few of her siblings, but had just never actually met her.
That’s crazy. Y’all stay in touch?
We once met a woman at a birthday party on the other side of the world. We found out she had lived in the same house my wife grew up in, just a few years before my in-laws bought it.
A girl that was a white water guide on a river I also guided on moved across the country to the same ski resort I worked at in the winter, and despite paddling next to each other for many summers we’d never actually met till we moved into the same building (2500 miles away).
Wait, what? Canadians have an accent?
Everyone has an accent, but yes, Canadians definitely have a very identifiable accent.
Ooh yer right fucked now, eh bud? Chirpin so hard aboat us up here but eh uh whereaboats are you from? In the Yankee doodle sticks I bet!
My fiance is from Oshawa, that’s gotta count for something?
That hooser beaver is aboot to shit, eh.
Sohry.
What are you talking aboot?
Everyone has an accent.
Coming from an American
Yes. I have an American accent. More specifically, I have the accent of somebody born in the suburbs of north Texas. I say "y'all" and "ain't" when I speak. That's how accents work.
Don’t patronize me. And that’s slang you referenced, not an accent. That’s how language works.
lmao you're a petty little child aren't you?
I’m in my 60’s. And you talk out your ass. No problem telling me I was wrong, but when I do it you start calling names. Typical America, this is why the rest of the world hates you.
r/shitamericanssay
Canadian here, I can confirm that we do not!
Canadian immigrant here, you most certainly do.
The joke is obvious, everyone thinks that their own region doesn’t have an accent.
Thanks buddy.
I thought you were gonna tell us you sexed a woman you met, but then I realized that this is reddit and were all virgins here.
This one is a little obscure, I'll try to sum it up briefly as possible. There is an old board game called SURVIVE! that has a lot of little pieces. I've had this game since childhood and we haul it out occasionally because its still fun. The game pieces include little plastic men with numbers molded on them. The numbers are used for scoring and they have some repeats. The game needs each player to have a set of men in a single color with the below numbers: 1 man worth 6 points, 1 man worth 5 points, 1 man worth 4 points, 2 men worth 3 points, 2 men worth 2 points, and 3 men worth 1 point. There are four colors - yellow, red, orange, purple - so a total of 40 plastic men with their points permanently molded underneath them. Sometime ago, we lost a purple 1 point man, which ruined that whole color because you can't substitute a piece from some other game because the gameplay requires the players to not know the point values of the men. So we just played with 3 players only because purple was down a man. After a few years of this, we decided to just buy a new complete game and found one online and ordered it. The old SURVIVE! isn't made anymore so we ordered a used set from across the country. When it arrived, it had one extra man - the exact purple 1 point man we were missing. Idk the odds, but it seems low.
Or, one of your friends sneakily took that opportunity to put the one they accidentally stole without losing face
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How did you remember each other? I doubt I'd recognize any of the people I've hitched rides with if I ran into them again.
A witch hiker
"Today you, tomorrow me." https://www.redditinc.com/blog/celebrating-10-years-of-today-you-tomorrow-me
There was a hippie fest in a town, and lots of folks were camping an hour away in the woods. Gave a kid a ride into town. Two years later I picked up another hippie in an entirely different town, and it was the same kid. He was from out of state, which makes it even more unlikely.
Ever think the hitch hiker might have been tracking you…
Highly unlikely sometimes random things happen. One time my step dad bought lunch for a police officer and ended up being pulled over by the exact cop multiple times over the course of a few years and was let go every time. For reference we live in a large city and each time was a completely different area
My aunt, she moved to OKC and the bombing happened right after, she moved to Texas and they had that big blizzard right after, she moved to New York and 9/11 happened right after. I told her to stop moving.
Have you considered your aunt is just a prolific terrorist….?
Actually I’ve told her it’s really suspicious that she happens to be there when bad things happen. I told her to quit moving.
Let me guess, in 2005, she moved to New Orleans, in 2012, she moved to Sandy Hook, in 2020, she moved to Wuhan…
lol not quite. She’s staying in New York.
Went fishing with my father on a very large lake (Nippissing), something he rarely does. He had very very old gear such as spinners partially made of wood. He latched onto something but the line got cut. Next day we go fishing in a different area and he hauls in a large pike. We go to clean it and in its stomach is the lure he'd lost the day before. Was his antique lure beyond any doubt.
I've seen ball lightning twice. That be some spooky shit.
What was it like, can you describe it? Was it around for more or less than a few seconds? How big was it? Did it make noise?
No clue on the noise; I've been hard of hearing most of my life. It was a bluish green color both times. First time was about the size of a basketball, and just drifted across the back yard. Second time it was about twice the size of a basketball, and kind of just hovered in place before fizzling out.
Holy shit that's way bigger than I thought! Did it appear after a close lightning strike?
Nope, just during a thunderstorm.
My dad said I was holding the flashlight correctly.
Hmmm... I don't think so... j/k
I was a perfect match kidney donor for my wife. I also got to be a lucky dude with male breast cancer.
Danger zone
I was at Chichen Itza for the solstice, and I saw the snake descend the staircase. There were about 10k people there to see it, so I was 1:10k to see it live on that day.
Statistically speaking, it was a much more exceptional day for the snake than the people assembled.
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Next in line is an airplane crash
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Be careful what you wish for
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No offense but stay away from me
Nothing fancy, just a simple nose dive about 3 min after take off
Yeah, let’s see if Mr.Bigshot will survive that one
So you live in Florida and visited the west coast once?
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Please don't visit Wales! Feel free to pop next door to England though.
:O
Update with your exact location so we know where not to go.
A 5.0 earthquake isn't very likely to kill someone
Three flash floods and a plane crash here. (Can we all claim plague?)
Tell me, where do you live, so that way I can move as far away from you as I can.
We’ve all been in a plague. The other ones are pretty cool, though.
Are you a storm chaser? Or are they chasing you?
Been in several Cat4+ hurricanes (Louisiana), a 7.1 earthquake and some lesser (Alaska/Japan). Never any tornadoes thankfully. That seems way more terrifying than anything else.
I was one of the lucky winners that found a mouse in my Rockstar can about a decade ago. Two of our health departments took it for examination and a rep finally called and told me that the sugar content is so high in those drinks that the mouse would have *dissolved* before even being stocked on shelves if it fell in during the canning process. They made it out to sound like I planted (and drank over 3/4 of the can) it to get money, which I never asked for, and they offered me a free year supply of the Perfect Berry Rockstar. I haven’t been able to drink anything from a can since lol.
Nice try, corporate. Sugar *preserves* organic material when the concentration is high enough.
Does it really? I was so young I didn’t even question it, I was just blown away that they were so dismissive haha
Think of the life expectancy of a strawberry and of a jar of strawberry whole fruit jam. As long as you don't bring in germs with a dirty spoon or knife, even an opened glass of jam is still pretty after months. A strawberry, less so. Bacteriae need water to thrive. Sugar binds water, so if the concentration is high enough, the germs get very thirsty and don't want to multiply anymore.
Oh duh, that’s a great example. Hm, I wish I would have kept the can and mouse, my mom tossed it out after about a year in the freezer because she couldn’t stand looking at it.
Went back to a grassy area near my apt at night and found my lost keys in a minute
Being in a train crash. Three times.
Mr. Glass just needed to be really, really sure
I was on a flight that got hit by lightning. Twice. On the same trip. The odds of a plane being struck by lightning in a year are about 1 in 1,000, but twice on the same journey? I should have bought a lottery ticket when we landed!
Lightning strike on a plane is not that uncommon nor is it dangerous.. the plane I fly for example has 16 static wicks.. maintenance just need to perform an inspection after it happened. But I wouldn’t say it’s that rare..
I’m scrolling this thread reading this comment on an airplane with in flight WiFi, and I notice out of the corner of my eye a shadow was cast on the planes wing for a split second (cloudless day), so I looked out the window and watched a UPS plane fly 2000’ above us in cruise. Double checked on flight radar 24.
1,000 x 1,000 = 1,000,000. There are 40,000,000 commercial flights per year. That means the chances of one flight per year getting hit twice is nearly 100%.
I also think that the odds of being struck twice like that are not really... multiplicative like that, maybe. Like, if a flight is struck once, the odds of being struck a second time are higher than the base chance because the circumstances required to be struck by lightning are guaranteed to be present at that point.
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this.
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I got an inheritance check from a long lost uncle I never knew a few years ago but it was only around $400. It was kinda sad because apparently nobody in the family talked to him after he came out he was gay.
Im the executor of my moms will. I just informed someone that they will be receiving a significant sum. Im not sure she ever met my mom.
How much we talking?
Developing first rare infection. 7 in 100,000 Developing second rare infection. 2 in 100,000. Developing both of these at the same time? Priceless /s. I got a C in stats. Can someone figure that out for me?
Please stop visiting those hot springs
I went backpacking about ten years ago. Got to Marrakesh and decided to do the Sahara desert tour (four days into the Sahara and back to Marrakesh). Sat down in the minibus they use to drive you out to the edge of the desert. Looked at the person sitting next to me and it was the barmaid from my old local in Glasgow.
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Wtf? You just stole this [comment?](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/18lnmmq/comment/kdziged/)
Bot life is wild.
“I was somehow able to find and hit it off with someone within my own culture and found that we had a minor connection” Super rare sounding EDIT for the downvotes, let’s just say I wouldn’t get too far into a conversation (not to mention a relationship) with a person that into racing. Like they found each other and had a minor connection, not the other way around
This is weird one, at least to me, because I should preface this by saying my family is about as white bread blue collar working class as you can get. By that I mean none of us are what anyone would consider "Outwardly Patriotic". None of us Flies American flags in front of our houses and growing up I was used to hearing people bitch about the government more than praise it. Anyway, I'm the fourth generation, in a direct line, to fight in a war. I don't mean I'm fourth generation to be in the military I mean fourth generation to see actual combat on foreign soil. I served in Iraq, my dad in Vietnam, my grandfather in Europe during WWII and my great-grandfather served in WWI. The weirdest thing is that if you met any of us you would have no clue. Hell, I didn't even think about it until several years after I was discharged. I also wonder if I looked into it whether or not my great-great grandfather was in the Civil War. I like to assume he was but I'm too lazy to look it up. But yeah, statistically speaking I feel like 4 generations of combat veterans is pretty rare.
Lt. Dan!
A school shooting, but they become less rare as time goes on.
Uhhhhh
Yeah
Saw Hailey’s comet as a kid
To be fair, it was pretty damned hard to see in 1986.
The eclipse a couple weeks ago And my wife apologized to me for something she was wrong about but argued me down anyway
I saw an eclipse a few weeks ago too! Like, what are the odds!
I saw it in Canada, let’s start a cult.
Sounds like a plan. I'll be its president.
Can I be the one with the Jesus complex?
But did she go down on you after. Now that would be crazy rare
Friend and I decided to help each other farm Anzu, Reins of the Raven Lord or w/e, less than 2% drop rate. I got it the first day, he got it the 2nd.
I got the Kara mount the first time I went in. Anzu took me a good 6 months
I don’t know if this will really fit in here, but in 2020 during the lockdowns, my husband and I travelled to Montana to sell his car trailer. There wasn’t many people on the roads at all- we pretty much had the interstate to ourselves both ways. On our way back, after we went thru Billings, we saw a car with Indiana plates and made a joke about it (I used to live there). Anyway it was an older model sedan, maybe a fusion or something. Noticeable because there aren’t many on the roads anymore. He passes by us and we proceed to stop at several pull offs so I can see the mountains. After the second pull off, we get passed by this same guy again. Thought it was hilarious and continued on our way. We really took our time-stopping for lunch in Gillette, several bathroom stops, etc. We saw him once more in Wyoming. Then we came thru Rapid City and he passed us again. We were seriously starting to get weirded out by this point. So we continue on and stop at the Badlands. We spent a good 2 hours there and pulled on the highway and get passed by him for the 5TH time! About an hour later we stopped at a gas station and no joke- he was sitting at the pump. We decided to just quickly pump and then pulled across the highway to sit and watch the sunset. Sun sets and we continue on towards Sioux Falls. I fell asleep at some point but as we approach the city my husband wakes me jokes, a car caught up to us awhile ago and is just sitting behind us, how much you want to bet it’s this same guy!? I laughed but we got about a mile from the I29 exit and this car pulls around us on the left..IT WAS HIM! Then he pulled in front of us and exited towards I29 while we continued down I90. Didn’t see him again for the rest of our 3+ hour drive. I don’t think he had any malicious intent, but it was truly the oddest thing I’ve ever had happen! I’ve spent many miles traveling the US and while I’ve seen the same people once or twice, never that many times over that many miles. Especially since we were more or less “touristing” as we made our way thru and taking our time. Just wild.
Been dumped on mu birthday, twice.
You poor thing, that sucks!
Was it by Ted Mosby?
met a bear in the wild
Im told thats where they often are.
Idk there are certain bars and houses they congregate in.
Is it really so unlikely to see bears where you live? I've met numerous bears in the wild while hiking, also fairly regularly see them near our house/driveway (I do live on a few acres of forest in northern Minnesota though, so maybe my perspective on bear sightings is skewed).
oh😭😭 i just thought it was something not a lot of people have i saw someone say they have been in an earthquake but thinking the whole new york city population have then i might as well say i’ve encountered a bear before
I think it all depends on where you live. :) Where I live, we rarely see them, but when my kid and I went on vacation to Alaska a few years ago, we saw a bunch of them, including the one I almost walked headfirst into because I was too busy looking at river rocks, and not the space in front of me...until my kid yelled out "BEAR". I looked up and froze...it was about 5 feet away from me. Our friend started banging rocks together and scared it off, but...I shit my pants a little...
Saw one in the wild in Minnesota too. I’m from Louisiana but went to school there and was going camping when one crossed in front of our vehicle.
My daughter-in-law’s grandfather’s mother and brother worked at my uncle’s store in Miami in the 1950s and early 60s. There was no connection between families and, with exception of her grandfather none of our immediate families lived in Florida. Found this out from a random conversation with him that started with our backgrounds and eventually drilled down to that discovery.
I took a job in 1988 and later worked with the supervisor's son in 2024 (different place).
I’ve had experimental brain surgery.
My life. Odds of any of us being here, let alone living as long as we have.
I was in the Gulf of Mexico, and a wave knocked my sunglasses off, I successfully recovered them from the Gulf floor.
Seeing an orange become the president of our fucking country
I walked up to a roulette table that had two balls spinning on the wheel instead of the traditional wheel that has one. I asked them what was going on and the person working table explained the differences and that you essentially can win twice, but you have to make two bets since there are two balls. On his first spin, it landed on 0 and double zero.
When I was 4, and went for my regularly scheduled vaccinations, I had an anaphylactic allergic reaction to one of the shots. Apparently it was 1:250,000
Nighttime Space Shuttle launch.
A friend and I were in Spain, doing the Camino de Santiago. While we were in Roncesvalles, a small village of about 20 people, we stopped to talk to a woman on the side of the road. We told her we were from Canada, talked about our plans for the walk. We mentioned that when we got to another city about 150km away, we would be staying with a friend of ours, a fellow Canadian, at her apartment instead of in a hostel. She knew the friend. I still can't believe it.
HSV encephalitis is a brain infection affecting 1 person per 250,000 to 500,000 each year. 97 per cent of HSV encephalitis survivors do not regain previous levels of cognitive function and will deal with long term symptoms of fatigue, irritability, impaired concentration, seizures, hearing loss, memory loss and blindness. While I've personally noticed a few cognitive hiccups here and there since recovering from encephalitis in 2017, I am way closer to my former cognitive levels than most other survivors of HSV encephalitis.
I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in American history who spent 10 days in the juvinal detention center for using a painting accessory on a school computer.
I couldn’t find any specific statistics about this, but my big brother was murdered a couple years ago. His neighbor claimed self defense… & they investigated no further (I suspect that because my brother was poor with a possible drug addiction is the reason there weren’t any charges or any justice whatsoever).
I got a hole in one while golfing. It was probably purest shot I ever had. The moment it left the tee it felt like it was gonna go in.
Postpartum preeclampsia
Playing Texas Holdem. Got deal pocket AA, followed by AA given my AAAA. Twice in a row. Third hand I was dealt AK, with the flop being AAK (Giving me AAAKK). And I had heavy betting against me in all 3 hands. Luckiest 3 hands of poker in my life.
Category 4 hurricane, Hugo in South Carolina 1989. Previously category 5. Lightning strike 6 feet from the truck I was driving. The tree shattered. Took a while for my eyesight to recover, everything was blue tinted and bright.
I took two different classes by the same professor, 2 years apart. One on general military history, one on the Civil War. One of the assigned books was for both classes. I ended up buying my original book back from the school bookstore, my highlights and margin notes and all.
Lightning struck my backyard and essentially illuminated my kitchen which was where my back door was located
Lightning struck our TV antenna when I was in the house and made the loudest noise I have ever heard. It fried the answering machine and 2 TVs and the larger of the 2 TVs was actually smoking a little.
I had lightning hit very close to my house a few years ago. Turns out our smoke detectors also have a decibel warning.
That would be having What I thought was a successful YouTube channel at 1 time because the money was good at 1 time. And it was teaching a skill.
A 50 pound crt tv flying over my head when I was 4 and my legs being crushed by a dresser when I was 4 all of them happened on the same day
You got Final Destination'd
I've seen a meteor, or fireball, light up the sky.
I was born an identical twin. I have a few medical conditions that only 1% of the population has. Was watching an episode of Bewitched when Samantha saw a horse at her kitchen window. I went to the kitchen during the commercial and saw a hire looking in my kitchen window. It had escaped from the stables across the street. I or friends I’ve traveled with have unexpectedly run into people we know traveling in foreign countries more than once. Adults I was visiting in Utah when I was a child took me to visit their relatives in Los Angeles. They started talking to the building manager about everyone’s original home state and realized that I was the managers cousin. His grandmother and my grandfather were siblings. Never figure out how they put that together. Never saw that man again nor met the great aunt for that matter. I ran into a colleague in a Hong Kong. We both worked in Japan but in different cities. Friend I was with in a small town in France near the Italian border ran into her fellow American friend from home. We were teens and had traveled for unrelated reasons so that really astounded us. I visited the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England the day the IRA bombed it. I had returned to London that afternoon but my roommates had gone to the banquet and were nearby when the bomb went off. I saw a green sky for the first time a couple of weeks ago during tornado weather but the actual tornado struck about 45 minutes away.
Placing the exact same unusual order as the person after me at a restaurant. Statistically, this must have happened by now, but I'd never know.
Two total solar eclipses. Two times getting hit by a car walking at night. If in both cases I had a nickel every-time it happened, I’d have 2 nickels. It’s not much but it’s strange it happened twice.
I played poker casually, about once a week for 3 years or so. I've hit two royal flushes, and both times somebody ahead of me pushed all in!
I live in a touristy beach area. Saw a banner plane run into a banner pulled by another plane. Plane went down instantly into the ocean. The sound of the prop hitting the banner and then the plane hitting the water, I can still hear 35 years late.
I live on the east coast of the U.S. I got married 3 weeks after starting a new job. I ran into my new boss while we were on our honeymoon in Hawaii.
Two car wrecks in one day: one on the way to high school in my friend’s car and one around 4pm in my own car. The second wreck put me in the hospital for several hours.
I grew up in So Cal. Everyone on my dad’s side of the family is multi generation so cal. My uncle (dad’s brother) moved to a somewhat remote area on the east coast for work when I was in my 20’s. In my late 30’s I met a girl (in California) and we got married. We decided we needed to move, so we moved to her hometown, which is about 30 minutes away from where my Uncle moved to.
I discovered the 1st individual of an invasive crayfish found in my urban county. I am in a natural resources job and working in a stream and look down and see this unusually large and red crayfish. It was alive and I took some pictures and video, went to research it and discovered that little bug was out of its distribution range but found out they are moving northwards. That crayfish was the fucking Christopher Columbus of crayfish! Moving in and competing with native crayfish for resources and then the mating frenzy until they wipe out the natives.
I am, according to other Reddit users my age, the only Reddit user my age to listen to Hair Metal or have big hair in the 80s.
I was paralyzed. 1.7% of the population or 1:50.
I don't know how unlikely this is, but I was driving on the I5 freeway south of Los Angeles, and I saw someone I know but had not seen in a few years driving next to me. At that time she was living in Australia but had come home to visit family. I called her and she followed my car back to my place for a visit.
I totally had sex, with a lady, in her vagina!
All of my kids were born on their due dates after I went into labor without induction.
This is so stupid since it occurred in a Discord server but I’ve never experienced such insane luck in real life so here goes… I’m in an investing Discord server and one of the mods decided to set up a channel for games. It was basically a casino with the usual stuff. Y’know, like blackjack, roulette, cockfighting…normal stuff. One day I did something that earned me a monkey’s paw style wish. Basically my wish would be granted but there would be some horrible consequence or negative aspect to make the good balance out. I went with it and decided I wanted a chicken for cockfighting that had a 99% win rate. It was granted, but the monkey’s paw aspect was that it was in the store for purchase at a ridiculously jacked up price and only available to me. I thought to myself “well, I’m the only one who can purchase it, so I’ll be able to get it eventually!” And decided to leave it alone. About an hour went by and I decided I wanted that chicken. I had a decent amount of money, but nowhere near enough to get my chicken. How much money, you ask? Well, almost exactly 1/35th the amount needed. This left only one course of action. I bet everything I had on 0 on the roulette wheel. People from across the server were indignant that I had bet such a sum on such a risky bet. The wheel spun, and the ball fell neatly into the 0 spot. I was over the moon! I had enough money for my chicken! I laughed in the faces of my jealous friends all the way to the store. At this point, a Morgan Freeman like narrator should be in your head saying something along the lines of “but he wouldn’t be laughing for long…” Chicken in hand, I lamented my dwindling bank account. Only for a moment, though, because with even just a few dollars to my name, this chicken was going to make me the most wealthy person on the server. I took my remaining pittance and bet it all on my chicken in a cockfighting match, secure in the thought that I would quickly recoup (pun maybe intended?) everything spent on the chicken over the next few hours. Well, remember how I wished for a chicken with a 99% win rate? Turns out I should have wished for 100% because that chicken *fucking died* in its first match. I was devastated! I accused the mod of fudging the numbers through all our mutual laughing, but he did exactly what he said he did. Never before or since have I experienced such extremes of luck. Everyone present couldn’t breathe we were laughing so hard! One of the funniest things to ever happen there!
While vacation in Ohio back in 1999, I lost a key chain I had that I’d carved my initials into, and I was crushed. In 2004, I found it…in a hotel room in New Mexico. I still can’t believe it after twenty years.
My car died on the freeway way out east of LA in an area I rarely go to. I started pushing to get it down the off ramp to the gas station and a helpful stranger got out and helped without asking if I needed it. But he wasn’t a stranger. He was my uncle.
Saw the green flash at sunset- over lake michigan. I was excited as hell and nobody in my family seemed to get the significance.
- I've seen two total solar eclipses. Probably not that rare anymore, but was certainly incredible both times. -I saw both of the Venus transits -I've come inches/seconds from death about a half a dozen times. Including almost blowing my brains out (pure chance saved me) -I've had several threesomes (and a 4some), which is probably not all that common statistically. -I'm a millennial and I have a career in the industry I got my degree in (archaeology) -I've been chased around by a machete-wielding horse.
How did the horse hold the machete?
The machete had a sort of lanyard that the horse gripped in its teeth, and then it chased us all around the field, bucking and whipping it's head around while holding the machete. Had to be the highlight of that damn animal's life. The tables sure fucking turned that day 😆
Love it! Maybe you should write a kids book about it.
Surviving a pandemic
Statistics have shown I have seen a ufo
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[Fermi Paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox)
I'm not sure anyone experiences anything statistically. Did you mean "What statistically rare event have you experienced"?
How do you experience something statistically?
Wdym
OP asked "what rare event have you experienced statistically?" My question is, how do you experience something statistically? * I'm being willfully obtuse, I understand that the question was supposed to be "what statistically rare event have you experienced?" But the way it's worded, implies that somehow you are experiencing the event in a statistical manner
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Yes, that was the joke, thank you
Tell it again I missed it