Are there any other folks on the forum whose mothers are British warbrides?

user 423 · Jul 21, 2017

In my travels over the past 40 years I've met a half-dozen or so. In 1980 I was signing up at a Denver plasma center and the young lady doing the intake gasped and exclaimed,"We have the same birth date!" Somehow the fact that we both had British moms was revealed and man, at that second in time you could feel the crackling of energy in the air as our eyes locked. Staring into those beautiful hazel eyes I was nearly beside myself with glee since I had surely found my soulmate!

Actually, I didn't, since she was happily married and had 3 kids. They didn't have a lottery back then but these days, if I happen to run into a lady like that again, I will buy us 2 tickets and we will have that $300,000 motorhome.

lenny flank · Jul 21, 2017

Mathematically, the odds of any two random people having the same birthday (month and day) are 1 in 365 (well, actually a little lower because of leap days, but we'll ignore that). With 100 random peopler, it's about a 50/50 probability that two of them will have the same birthday.

(OK, it's actually a bit more complex than that since human births tend to have a higher occurence in autumn than the rest of the year, so some months will have slightly better odds than others).

But matching the date and month AND year is harder. Not "lottery" level of improbability, I'd think, but it's be a big number.

And if they both came from the same little village in Wessex or something....well............

SoulRaven · Jul 21, 2017

When I was in elementary school, 150 kids total, about 25 in my class, 3 of us had the same birthdate, Cathy, Cindy and Terri.

I met an English woman that was a war bride several years ago. She shared her story with me, a story many never knew. I have known a lot of people, and lived and worked both on military installations along with living other places, and she was the only one I ever met, but when one travels around, it is not unusual at all to find "likes". In the AL RV park, we were living a trailer away from someone born two years earlier in the same hospital in IN, and he took his prom date to the restaurant on the lake in my little town. I had 2 relatives that lived on that lake. So keep looking and talking with people, and you'll be amazed to find that they were serious when they said "It is a small world!"

user 423 · Jul 21, 2017

lenny flank said:
(OK, it's actually a bit more complex than that since human births tend to have a higher occurence in autumn than the rest of the year, so some months will have slightly better odds than others).

IDK...seems there would be more in the spring; 9 months after those June weddings. Both my brother and I were born in March.

user 423 · Jul 21, 2017

Snow Gypsy said:
I met an English woman that was a war bride several years ago. She shared her story with me, a story many never knew. I have known a lot of people, and lived and worked both on military installations along with living other places, and she was the only one I ever met,

In a big country like the US they would be spread around pretty thinly. Only 67,000 or so married American GIs but since they participated in the baby boom, there are quite a few offspring out there.