Up until four days ago, I had never known that the famous Lloyds of London originated in a coffee-house in London in the 17th century. I learned of this fact as I was completing Neal Stephenson's historical epic, Quicksilver.
The following day, I read this again in a Longarm western.
The next day, I read this yet again in a graphic novel comic, Rex Mundi.
What are we looking at here? Million to one odds? I read on average sixty or seventy books per year and I've been doing it for over thirty years. In all that time, I never knew this Lloyds of London factoid - and then on three straight days, in three widely disparate types of fiction, I read it THRICE!!!!!???????
Cue in Twilight Zone music.
