Anyone here at Clutch BBS have any improbable one in million type events that they have heard of, have happened to them, or someone they know that they would enjoy telling? What are the chances of that? 24 August 2003 A whale jumping out of the water and on to your yacht seems like a billion-to-one shot, but it happened last week. And, as David Randall reveals, those who investigate unbelievable events know that the extraordinary happens every day. A holidaying family from Coventry was sailing off the Australian coast last week when a humpback whale jumped clear out of the water and landed on their yacht, much to the distress of mast, sails and sailors. Of all the oceans in all the world, the whale had to fall into theirs. What are the chances of that happening? There are 135 million square miles of ocean and the boat was only 30ft long. Randomly toss a humpback whale in the air and the odds of it hitting any particular ten yards of sea are about one-in-far-too-many-to-get-your-head-round. Wow. Well, yes, as those of us who spend our lives monitoring the planet's more ludicrous events would say, up to a point. For we know the really freaky thing would be the world going very long without remarkable happenings. As Paul Sieveking, who has spent nearly 30 years with the Fortean Times, sifting and adding to its three-million-item archive of the strange, says: "Phenomena occur much more often than people imagine." And so, the world being in a constant state of Just Fancy That, we've developed a sort of Richter Scale of the Remarkable. It goes, as the pianists say, something like this: 1 Routine phenomena Barely a day goes by without a letter delivered decades late (112 years, Australia to England is the record), a cat trapped under floors for weeks on end (always with the added detail that it survived by lapping condensation), a road accident between lorries carrying fortuitous loads (one with bacon, say, colliding with another bearing eggs), pets navigating vast distances to return home (normally cats, the record is held by a collie who managed, by stowing away on a boat, the 3,000 miles from Calcutta to Inverkeithing, Scotland), and various permutations of golfers holing in one (the odds on any ace are 27,000 to one). 2 The ring recovered Lost rings found and returned by strangers are the small change of the phenomena world. They are, after all, made of substances that endure, and are often inscribed. In Hawaii, diver Ken DaVico reckons to find about 15 weddings rings a year in the sea, many of whose owners can be traced. Even if fish get there first all may not be lost: there are cases of rings being retrieved many years later from sharks, monkfish, mussels and pike. Far less common are losers making the find, as when Karen Goode went to a Pembrokeshire beach and found a ring she had lost when bathing 10 years before. 3 Lightning striking more than twice Instances of people (invariably park rangers or similar) being struck more than five times are almost commonplace. Few women, however, have been unluckier than Martha Martika, a Bulgarian who has been widowed not once, not twice, but three times by lightning strikes. But this pales compared to the loss suffered by the Bena Tshadi football club in the Congo who, on 25 October 1998, had all 11 players killed by lightning during a match. The opposition was untouched. 4 Long-lost Uncle Billy only lives down the road! Long-lost relatives, like rings, have a habit of turning up in the strangest ways. Sisters Barbara Small and Doreen Frost, adopted separately in 1943, bumped into each other in the butcher's shop after an interval of 52 years; and John Leadbitter of Southampton had been trying for decades to trace his brother, whom he had not seen for 40 years, when he met a woman who said "You look like my husband". The rest you can guess. 5 The freaky fall Babies falling 17 floors and landing on their nappies are not the only ones to survive long drops. Only last month a woman slipped off Beachy Head and was caught on a narrow ledge hundreds of feet from the ground. Snow often plays a part, cushioning the fall - of a Japanese climber who tumbled 4,000ft off Mount Rishiri, for instance - and giving many the owner of a failed parachute a soft landing. For a true miracle, however, try the Swiss pensioner who was blown by a freak wind from his 17th-floor balcony, only for another gust to propel him safely on to a lower balcony. 6 The spooky coincidence Many - like two people at a party sharing a name, or a birthday, or even the famous coincidences between the deaths of Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy - are not that unusual, people's amazement at them being due largely to ignorance of the laws of probability. And yet... Sir Anthony Hopkins, left, got on the Tube after a fruitless search for George Feifer's novel The Girl from Petrovka. He looked down, and there on the next seat was a copy of the book. It was the author's own, stolen two years before. Two more classics: in 2001 Laura Buxton released a balloon in Staffordshire. It was found 140 miles away - by a girl called Laura Buxton. Neville Ebin died in Bermuda when a taxi knocked him off his moped. A year later his brother was killed on the same moped in the same street by the same taxi driven by the same man and carrying the same passenger. And, best of all, in Massachusetts in 1965 Roger Lausier, aged four, was saved from drowning by a woman called Alice Blaise. Nine years later Roger saw a man drowning on the same beach, dived in and saved him. He was Alice Blaise's husband. 7 The ironic exit Courtesy of the not-so-Grim Reaper comes the following: South African Danie du Toit gave a lecture warning that death could occur at any time. He sat down, popped in a peppermint, and promptly choked to death on it. In 1998 Jose Ricart was walking around Burgos, Spain, with a banner that read "The End of the World is Nigh". Sure enough a lorry ran him over. And in 1988 Anderson Godwin, a murderer reprieved from the electric chair, was sitting on a steel commode and bit through a wire while trying to fix his TV headphones, thus turning his metal toilet into a version of Old Sparky. WOW! What are the odds against that? Well, rather less than you might think, even for something so utterly unusual. Nine years later exactly the same thing happened to Laurance Baker, a Pittsburgh prisoner who had also been spared the electric chair. Billion? Schmillion. Happens every day. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=436559
Great read! As that article mantions, www.forteantimes.com is loaded with strage happenings, and is also one of my favorite websites. The forums are equally interesting.
Um, the thread title is "what are the chances..." not the "utterly and completely impossible". Btw- I always have to get my daily/weekly dose of the Fortean Times, you just can't believe how many truly bizarre things happen every day.
We had an incident at Lake Norman-- where many of the NASCSAR drivers reside-- last week. A speeding motorboat went airborne at 2:20 AM and hit a car on the bridge that crosses the lake. No one was hurt. That doesn't top the whale story but it's interesting ...
Once I was arguing with this smart-ass stranger on the BBS Hangout only to realize we were old friends and used to party together. I heard about this one before, but in the version I heard the guy was jumping off a skyscraper to commit suicide. When the wind caught him, it threw him safely through a window foiling his plans of taking his own life. The joke was that he was such a loser, he couln't ever jump off a building to kill himself.
well, a couple years ago I met some new friends. I only really kept in touch with 2 of them, because I felt a connection with both of them. Turns out later we found out that my birthday was exactly 5 months before one of their's birthday, and exactly 5 months and 5 days after the other one's birthday. and one time my mother was making scrambled eggs from a 5-dozen crate she bought from a Costco, and over half of the 5-dozen were double yolks. man, these sound like algebra problems.
I went to a small high school (my class had 77 people in it) in Illinois. Had made good friends with a guy my freshman year, but he moved to Vegas and we lost touch. Met him in Houston when I went to college. I went to UH and he ended up going to Rice, and we were both in school for chemical engineering! What are the chances of that?? No one else in that town went to college outside of Illinois, Indiana, or Wisconsin.
Here's the good joke to go with this. Two drunks are sitting at a bar at a posh club on the 70th floor of a skyscraper. This club happened to have a balcony with the doors open, but alas, a new building had been built right across the street to block any view that the club used to have. One drunk, always a bragger, said to the other: Drunk 1: "Hey buddy, check out that window." Drunk 2: "What about it?" D1: "I used to love the view over there, but now they built that crappy building right across the street. I hate those new "modern" looking buildings" D2: "Uh, OK" D1: "One interesting fact though, if you were to jump out of that window and off the balcony, the wind would force you right back up on the balcony and you would never get a scratch." D2: "Quit BS'ing me man. There is no way that would happen" D1: "You see, its the way the new building was built, with all that fancy architecture and curved windows...it shears the air straight back up...I betcha 100 bucks that I can jump out that window and in 10 seconds I'll be walking back in here where you can buy me another beer." D2: "Deal...easiest 100 bucks ever...but leave it with the bartender so I don't have to scrape it off the sidewalk" D1: "Deal" So the two drunks shake on it and settle up their money with the bartender to hold. The first drunk winks at the second drunk and runs as fast as he can straight out onto the balcony and over the side. The second drunk runs out there and looks over the side, only to see the first drunk falling slower and slower...then ever so slowly start to climb back up in the air. After a few seconds the drunk who jumped slowly floated up and over the railing and right back onto the balcony. Drunk 2: "Holy cripes! That was amazing, you certainly deserve 100 bucks and a beer!" Walking back to the bar, the first drunk collects his money and his beer from the bartender. Drunk 1: "Ya know...I'll give you your 100 bucks back if you have the balls to give that a try...the trick is to run as hard as you can and jump out as far as you can to catch the wind." Drunk 2: "Normally I would never do it, but the reason I'm drinking is my wife caught me out at the strip club and threw me out of the house...I'll really need that 100 bucks to get her some flowers." The second drunk decides its time to be a man and lines himself up with the balcony. He gets down in a crouch position intending to sprint as best he could and jump as far as he could out over the street below. The drunk takes a huge breath and starts sprinting...and leaps out over the street. The first drunk peers over the railing just in time to see the second drunk start flailing his arms and legs around just before he nails the street below, splattering him on the concrete. The first drunk walks back over to the bar and sits down and orders another beer. The bartender looks at him a second: Bartender: "Your a really good customer here, and you tip really well, but I think I'm going to have to cut you off tonight. Your too mean of a drunk, Superman." Anyways...its a lot better when you tell it instead of type it. Hope it gave you a chuckle.
I wonder how many of these stories above would be surgically debunked were Snopes to get ahold of them (which they may already have).
I've had my left big toe nail become completely jarred loose...twice. Hurt like hell. Both times the whole nail slowly grew off and then a new one grew back.
Anyone remember when the South Padre island causeway collapsed? My friends were going surfing down there and went over the bridge about 5 to 15 minutes before it happened. There were a variety of reasons they could have been a little later crossing (the barge hit it around 2:30am) and they would have driven right off.
