Anyone alive today would be born between 1900 and 2023, right?

And their mothers, assuming they were between 13 and 50 when they gave birth, would therefore have been born between 1850 and 2010.

So that's 161 out of 9999 available last-4's (0000 is not used) that could possibly be someone's mother's birth year.

And then, of course, it has to be the right year within that space.

I am guessing this was something that happened to a few folks by chance and then was blown up by people who don't understand how many coincidences can occur across a population of millions.

Last four of their SSN? That makes no sense, those digits are sequentially assigned at the issuing office.

Yes, last four. Don't ask me how I know.. Might be a "born on base" thing but it's no coincidence.

It's a coincidence.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070203124309rn_1/www.cpsr.org/p...

It is a coincidence. You have a 1-in-10000 chance of getting any 4 digit number and they assign 5.5M a year, so we can expect that 550 people get their mother's year of birth every year. You just happened to get 1961.

(Total guess but how cool would it be if I was right?)

I have a REALLY hard time believing that but I've never looked into it. Like you said, 550 people a year get it. I just happened to be in the 0.01%? I should be luckier, lol.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-odds-that-your-birthday-i...