HUH?

People Across the U.S. Suddenly Receive Text Messages Originally Sent on Valentine’s Day

Some of the belated messages reconnected former lovers who have since split up, while others were delivered after the senders had passed away.

A strange glitch caused dozens of texts that people had originally sent on Valentine’s Day to finally land on their intended recipients’ phones early Thursday morning, arriving nine months late and in some cases reconnecting lovers who have since split up. Texts were delivered to baffled former lovers and family members across North America somewhere between 3 and 5 a.m. Thursday, depending on the time zone. The Verge reports that the delayed messages were sent from and received by both iPhones and Android phones, and the messages seem to have been sent and received across all major carriers in the U.S. and Canada. Several spouses said their partner sent them a text as they were asleep beside them, while others said they received a message from friends and partners who were now dead. A young man on Twitter said he received a text from a girl he had asked out on a date back in February, but she never responded. That is, until he received her unexpected reply nine months later. “It said, ‘Yes, I’d love to go out for Valentine’s Day.’ Now I know why we never dated,” he said in a tweet. A system that multiple cell carriers use for messaging appears to be at fault, but it’s unclear why the messages were never sent in the first place.