Coincidences

According to the BBC, Britain's two oldest men were both born on the same day - 29 March 1908:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-ta...l-43583260

There's an article on quite a striking coincidence in the SPR's Paranormal Review, issue 90.

The article is John Tate and it concerns two improbable meetings with his second cousins on the same day:
(1) One second cousin, Guy, whose grandmother had settled in North America, and his wife Mimi were staying with John for a short while. With him, they visited the area in the West Midlands where their ancestors had lived. At the Bratch, near Wombourne, they unexpectedly met Ann, the wife of another second cousin, Ian (whose grandmother was a third sibling). She hadn't known Guy and Mimi were in the country, and hadn't been to the Bratch for several years.
(2) Later the same day, John, Guy and Mimi visited Holy Austin Rock at Kinver Edge, and while Guy and Mimi were queueing for the toilet they got into conversation with another couple, Glyn and Elisa. They lived in the Netherlands, and Glyn hadn't been back to the area for 40 years, while it was Elisa's first visit. It turned out that Glyn was another second cousin, the grandson of a fourth sibling.

The author linked this strange experience to the possible influence of Ian's mother Winifred, who had died in 1999 and had been known in the family for bringing her relations together in big reunions. She had lived some 250 yards from Holy Austin Rock. He also speculated whether the first meeting could have some connection with the fact that his grandfather lived just around the corner from the Bratch in Wombourne.

I have 2 weird ones imo.

This sequence of events began around '90. I had a client that I photographed product catalogs for. One of the son's of the owner also worked there connected me with a female friend who was in the graphic design business. I wound up doing several catalogs for her around that time frame. 

Enter a small 2 man owned ad agency that was trying to get my clients business, and wound up getting. I continued on as photographer. In turn I got to be friends with one of the owners and also did jobs for his agency. It also turned out oddly enough, that he also knew the woman graphic designer who was friends with the son from the above.
After those few jobs I did for her at the time, I no longer worked with her. (She called me for another job. I quoted her a price... which was already a lowball ... and she balked at it, lol) Never spoke or heard about her again.

Fast forward 4-5 years to mid-later 90's. I'm sitting in the agency guys office. Totally out of the blue... total non sequitur... comes out of my mouth,  "Wonder what ever happened to that woman Tracy (her name). Have you ever heard from her?"   Of course, he says no, and that's the extent of that conversation.

I go home. I'm quick flipping through cable tv channels as guys do. At that time there was some kinds of cable shows featuring various 'lifestyle' type segments. So as I'm channel flipping, I catch a quick glimpse of a familiar face......  it's the flipping woman I just blurted out about in the office and haven't heard of in years!!
She was apparently being featured on the show because she was now some fashion editor for some magazine in New Jersey or something.  Weird or what, lol.

Second one....

At some point during the mid 90's iirc, I started noticing this 11:11 thing. Back then, I thought it was for me only. Nothing more than the universe having its little joke with me and me alone, kind a thing. I didn't connect to the internet till '97 and even then had no way of knowing anything about this. It was just a curiosity afaic.

By the end of the 90's I managed to find out this Art Bell show and found it was broadcast on an area AM station so I started listening sporadically. By that I mean maybe a few nights a week for a couple of weeks than lay off for weeks or a month or so.  
I also have a habit of listening to music or talk, as I go to sleep and while I sleep. Been doing that most all my adult life
So now a number of years after having started noticing the 11:11 business and maybe a year or so of sporadically listening to Art Bell's show, this happens....

Now mind you, again... afaic, this 11:11 is all for my own private 'entertainment', lol. I've never heard anything about it from any where else.
I go to bed on this particular night. I turn on the small radio that I put right on the bed near my head so as not to disturb anyone else, and listen to Art Bell. My usual time to go to sleep then is about 1-ish and about 15-20 minutes in, I fall asleep.  About 4:30 my eye's open full on wide awake. Art Bells show is still on. He's talking to a caller and I focus on what he's saying.....
Art Bell: " ..... I don't know what it is that's going on caller, but I have been receiving thousands of faxes and emails about that people keep seeing the number 11:11."
Let me tell you. I totally freaked out!  Lol

BTW... still seeing 11:11. Sometimes cycles  very frequently. Over 20+ years later still waiting for whatever it is to happen.  

I must say, personally I don't get this fascination with 11:11. It happens every day. Twice. It's so predictable, you could set your watch by it.

What I find more interesting is when some name or number turns up in more than one place, such as on the radio, playing in the background, and in the text of a book I'm reading. But still, even those, I think are often just plain random events. There has to be some added ingredient, some additional significance before it becomes meaningful to me.

Speaking of the radio, I used to get lots of those 'drifting-off-to-sleep' states, where thoughts and words would tumble around in my mind, and I had the impression that I'd said the words in my mind before the voice on the radio spoke them. It felt like a very short-term precognition. But I'm not entirely sure. Because of the sleepy state, just trying to remember these things is difficult, and I'm left wondering whether it is just a quirk of the brain rather than something more.

This struck me as rather strange. Yesterday the Dow Jones Industrial Average (which incidentally had achieved an all-time high in the previous day's trading) closed at exactly the same point at which it had opened, to within a hundredth of one point - despite having varied over a range of more than 120 points during the day.

I suppose one would expect that to happen by chance around once in a decade.

Mysterious Universe has an article entitled "The Strange Tale of the Separated Twins Who Lived the Same Life":
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/12/t...same-life/

MU isn't always very strong on fact-checking, so perhaps the details need to be treated with caution, but the similarities between their lives are impressive. No doubt many could be put down to their shared genes, but it would strain my credulity to believe that they shared a genetic predisposition to marry two/four women named Linda and Betty!