American baseball players, Brady Feigl and…Brady Feigl, came across a very strange situation. Not only do their appearances share striking similarities, but the pair also share the exact same name.
Both men have red hair and a red beard, they’re both 6’4 in height and wear almost identical black glasses.
The strangest coincidence, however, is certainly their name. Compared to a surname such as Smith, Feigl is hardly common. For example, the Smith surname appeared 2,442,977 times in the 2010 US census, and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 828.19 would have the surname Smith. Whereas Feigl is ranked #82,908 in terms of the most common surnames in America appearing 227 times. If you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 0.08 would have the surname Feigl.
For this reason, alongside their noticeably similar looks, people around the Brady Feigl’s could not help but wonder if they were related. This curiosity may well have been inspired by the incredible story of the ‘Jim twins’, in which, after being separated at birth, a pair of long-lost siblings were reunited aged 39 to find they had lived exceptionally similar lives.
Once reunited, the ‘Jim twins’ discovered matching interests, their firstborn sons had the same name, both had a dog called Toy, a brother called Larry, and most bizarrely of all, both men had a first wife called Linda and a second wife named Betty!
Of course, another famous incident is the case of the long-lost identical triplets, Edward 'Eddy' Galland, David Kellman, and Robert 'Bobby' Shafran. In the film ‘Three Identical Strangers’, we learn about the remarkable true story of when Robert Shafran discovered that he had a twin brother when he arrived on the campus of a New York community college and was constantly greeted by students and staff who incorrectly recognised him as Eddy Galland.
Unfortunately, in the Brady case, DNA testing revealed these men were not related at all. Their one big similarity from the DNA test was the level of Germanic ancestry, with both registering as 53 per cent Germanic in origin, but on every other measure, they were different. Instead, this case was simply an amazing coincidence and a rare chance for two baseball players to meet their doppelgangers.
Interestingly, for each person in the world, there are about six other people in the world who look almost exactly like you!