Truth Stranger Than Fiction

I have a story awaiting loading which has a comic political theme, in that each party makes huge cock-ups requiring new elections at regular intervals, one of which involves the UK invading Greenland on the basis that nobody actually lives there and it is unclaimed (not true of course!). Imagine my surprise then when I read in the news that Donald Trump wants to BUY Greenland off of the Danes - allegedly!

I thought of it first!! Honest!!

Ever had events in R/L make a story redundant or at least make it that your imagination gets no credit?

There's a duology called American Hippo by Sarah Gailey that is about an alternate American West that features hippo riding and raising cowboys. Weird thing is there was a bill in front of congress at about the turn of the 20th century that proposed importing and farming large numbers if hippos to solve a problem with an aggressive swamp plant that was damaging the bayous and a meat shortage, it very nearly passed. It inspired the books.
George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman books are full of odd events and characters who are all historically real.

I wrote a humoristic sequel to my LSF story "My Very Best Wet Dream Ever" in which my favorite movie star, Eva Mendes (The "hostess with the mostest" back there where it really counts!), manages to liberate Cuba (While she is on a secret mission for the CIA!). I would have been delighted if what happens in the story would have happened in reality. Unfortunately LSF declined to publish this sequel so you LSFers have no way of knowing what I am talking about. I did tell the world about this story of mine in a thread in the Whacks Lyrical section of Bottomlines a few months ago, in case anybody here wants to check it out.

I have a collaborative story on site called the The Soup Standards Centre which is about, well, let's just say about the eternal struggle between freedom and censoriousness to avoid spoilers.
Anyway, I am sure that in time, perhaps after the official documents are de-classified in 30 years, that it will be found to have been all true (and have to be moved from the fiction section to the history section of the library)

Actually Harry Truman thought of it at the end of World War II

This didn't ruin a story for me, but probably planted the seed for Role Reversal stories. I was at work, decades ago, and I was with a good friend of mine, a fellow associate. There were tourists in the store frequently, because of its location and I think these people were Dutch. Definitely European. It was a boy and his mother. He was between 6-8 and she was in her forties. He unironically, not in a joking tone, threatened to spank her. I don't remember why, but it was like any shopping scene where a child is getting frustrated with their parent. It's the next part that I remember as if it happened today:

Child: "If (dialogue I don't remember), I'm going to spank you when we get home, Mom."
Mother: (no response.)

My co-worker turned to me with his eyes as big as plates. We both silently, but wildly laughed. Nothing filled the silence but our laughter after he said that, but it was peculiar because the mother had no real reaction to it. My co-worker looked at me as if to say "did you hear that? Is that for real? Does that happen?"

The pair just continued shopping with the slight air of the mother having been put in place. To this day, that whole situation is a mystery to me, but for a child to even say such a thing with no tone of amusement shocks me to this day. Role reversal in and of itself isn't shocking. I spanked women who were much older than me when I was a teen. I know someone who spanked their mother in only the very slightest of humor. For some reason, the time and tone of that situation still stands out the most.