That is actually a quest in your miscellaneous quest log. I talked to him and left, then came back days later and he was still sitting there.

I have been tracked down by at least three couriers with messages that jump start a side quest. They are always labeled as "courier" and have the same dialogue.
Snow foxes that run alongside me for a while wheezing and snorting. I never kill them.
I ran into a random single belligerent in heavy armor labeled only as "Imperial" (My character is also an Imperial)

If you follow the foxes they usually lead you to interesting locations (Marked and Unmarked).

Also, if someone from your race dies you have a chance of a Courier delivering a heirloom from this dead distant relative of yours. (The letter has names and everything)

Nope, wasn't in my quest log. And when I came back a bit later with a healing pot (didn't have one on me to begin with - used them all up on the last dragon....) he was dead.

-I dont know if these are considered random events or not, but sometimes I come across completely random spawns. The game tries to make it so you don't notice it, but its kind of hard not to notice when two giants and a mammoth instanly spawn right behind you. I was traveling on a road for a while and I just happened to look behind me and there they were. They weren't there 10 seconds ago when I passed that same stretch of road.

-In another instance a dragon and a giant spawned and started fighting. The dragon must have spawned because I never actually heard it coming. You know how you usually hear the echo of the dragon roar before you see it? I think it spawned on the ground because I never saw it in the air. Hmm....

-Ok this one must be a random encounter for sure. I witnessed two or three Agents of Stendarr or whatever they are called fighting a powerful vampire. The vampire wiped the floor with those guys with powerful spells and almost killed me.

-Fire mage and forst mage fighting eachother. I like this one - they both lose

-A woman runs up to me and tells me her story of how she escaped from a bandit hideout and gives me the location. She then asks where the nearest town is and runs off.

-Traveling khajit merchants/shooma dealers

-Thalmor assassination squad. This only happened once

-Traveling mercenaries with good gear and a generic name based on race

To get a DB assassin after you, you need to kill the woman in the orphanage for the lad in Windhelm.

There are many random encounters, some wont happen unless you have done certain quests though.

I had one guy run up to me saying he won my bet and managed to steal the hood (something that happened during the Sanguine questline when my charachter was blotto), he wanted a huge amount of gold for it but I persuaded him just to take 700. All I got was a plain hood.

I've seen a man and woman walking along the road arguing because they were robbed by bandits, their clothes shredded by Sabercats and all their bodyguards killed and all the woman complained about was her shoes.

The headless horseman who might only appear in a certain area because he has a set destination.

If you have a somewhat high magic skill you might get a mage come up and challenge you to a duel.

Bandits dressed as Imperials who try to extort some money off you (but do it badly)

A scavenger amongst bodies of stormcloaks and imperials who will attack on sight

I also saw an Infected attacking a bandit camp north of Whiterun who then spoke to me saying he was surprised I didn't attack him, he gave me a quest to see the Khajit at a Deadric shrine.

Interesting!

Nope again. I NEVER do that quest line or any DB quests - and I always have a DB assassin complete with the letter from Astrid.

I agree. Have had 2 or 3 visits from dbrotherhood assassins with no other dark brotherhood association.

But then once...

"Two children running up to me selling dwemer cogs and the location of a local dwemer ruin."

i think those were the "children of the corn" very weird

Wow,theres alot of them i havent seen yet..nice^^

I had a new one happen to me earlier that i havent seen listed here =) I was walking around Riften minding my own business when all of a sudden a random thief (in full thieves guild gear) stole something from a merchant and got completely butchered by the town guards...it was hilarious lol

Imperials escorting a Stormcloak prisoner....

are you supposed to free this guy?

There are several that havent been mentioned in this thread, although they may start a misc quest and thus not count? I know there are plenty more, but here's a few i had yesterday:
- Pilgrim on the way to azuras shrine giving you a little lore (marking the location)
- Afflicted refugee, with some skin desease, on his way home to hammerfell (marking location of their leader or something)
- Vigilantes of stendar that can cure your diseases and tell about lore etc
- Mercenary on their way to where things are happening, speech/intimidate may let you find out where they are going
- Farmers/refugees that had their home destroyed by dragon (i think, or maybe civil war?) you can give 5g to

I retired my lvl 40 after she finished the MQ and started a fresh character... who has different kinds of encounters?

Not all are different, but my lvl 40 got jumped by DB assassins at least 7 times, new charactewr is lvl 26 and... no DB. She hasn't been been accosted by a roadside thief, either, but she's run into 2 punks on the road (an Orc and a Redguard) who called her a milk-drinker, and once she experienced an earthquake. The ground shook beneath her feat, causing her to stumble as if a dragon landed nearby, but there was no dragon... no nothing. She was in the reach, just gathering roadside juniper berries.

seen someone dead on the ground named "frightened woman"
she had alot of ancient nord weapons scattered around her

I've had a "frightened woman" run up to me and telling me bandits held her captive for weeks and then giving me the location to their den. I guess the one in your game didn't survive her escape.

I had her run up to me and start a conversation while I was fighting bandits, she then broke of the chat and joined in the fight and wouldn't talk to me afterwards.

what was funny is when i seen her maiq was checking her dead body

Forsworn sacking a cart and leaving beartraps around for me.

A cart with several burnt corpses, scorch marks and fire everywhere, and some lootable stuff in the cart itself. Looked like a Dragon attack.

A thief (in my case a Khajit) along a road will hide high above on a rock (if you walk from Whiterun to Riften) and attempt to rob you - too bad I was in the mountains and saw him below me first. (Too bad, I'm a khajit too... I try not to kill them.)

Encountered a Flame atronach that didn't belong to a conjurer wandering around Whiterun. It was just done killing an Ice mage too.

Ran into an Orc skooma dealer once... weird, since everyone else seems to have run into Khajiti. Maybe it's because I'm a khajit?

Ran into the Headless Horseman once - was a pleasant surprise.

I have not encountered half of these events described myself, and I go cross-country a LOT. Maybe I should stick to the roads more?

- a Vigilant of Stendarr fighting against an Atronach

- a travelling (non aggressive) giant

- a hunter that asks for help with a bunch of wolves

I think these are dependent on doing some certain quests first.

- Farmers going to join a side in the civil war
- Crazy woman comes up to you and asks to be hit with - Thieves try to rob you. - - -That's all I can think of right now. I played a lot and I've yet to see a lot of these mentioned.

There's a spot just further along the road from the ritual stone that sometimes acts as a trigger ( has to be in the middle of the night ), been attacked by vampires, had assassins try to take me out there even had folk try mugging me.
There's also a group of muggers trying to pass themselves off as imperial soldiers and further along you'll find the real soldiers murdered.

I have a feeling that no one is going to believe this, but when I was following some Imperials herding a prisoner and ghost on a horse named The Headless Horseman passed us all by. I tried to catch up to him so see if I could talk to him but my stamina ran out.

The Old Orc spawned for me along a road outside of Whiterun; i left him alone when I first came across him since I was low level.

Later on, I went down that piece of road, and there was a fire mage-ice mage fight going on... with the old orc in the middle of it, but he got fried. Or frozen. Not sure which.

He got his death, but I wanted to be the one to give it to him.

Oh that explains that random event... I never made head or tail of that one. Made absolutely no sense to me (primarily because I always found the real soldiers and the muggers TOGETHER, so it always seemed like some strange hazing...

There's a similarly good spot near Anise's cabin. If you fast travel there, and save, you should be able to experience every available random event in a little copse of trees to your left, when looking at the cabin itself. The random event spawns when you load your game, but you aren't in the same area when you are at the cabin.

Omg There was a body of a frightened Woman Alongside a Hag raven and a sprringian weird...