Cambridge Coincidences Collection

As of the 23rd May 2022 this website is archived and will receive no further updates.

understandinguncertainty.org was produced by the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk based in the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. The aim was to help improve the way that uncertainty and risk are discussed in society, and show how probability and statistics can be both useful and entertaining.

Many of the animations were produced using Flash and will no longer work.

Well I Never!

Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University wants to know about your coincidences!

A Molotov Cocktail

I was living in Rome during the 1970s in an area that was a hotbed for the Red Brigades rioting. As a young woman and a foreigner, I just kept a low profile and did my best to avoid trouble and keep my distance. However, one night I had a very upsetting dream from which I awoke in floods of tears and I got up and shouted to my flat mates to quickly get out of the house as I sensed something bad was about to happen. We all ran out and literally seconds later, a Molotov Cocktail was thrown into our back garden causing damage to the back of the building, call it a premonition, call it a co-incidence I don't know what it was, but I was glad I listened to the 'warning' in my upsetting dream.

Roll of Honour Plaque 1914-1918 -Waterloo Station

I must have walked past this plaque thousands of times in my life as I used to use Waterloo Station during my working life. In all those years, I never had the time or inclination to stop and read any names on it.Then for some apparent reason, one day I looked up at the names and found to my slight embarrassment the name A.E Male on the Roll of Honour.I was somewhat intrigued as my maiden surname is not so common.When I checked out his records, which have been meticulously recorded by the railway, I found in fact he was my great uncle and I felt somewhat ashamed that I had unwittingly ignored him for so many years!

An uneasy feeling

On New Year's Day in 2000 , my husband and I decided to take our young family up to the West End to watch the New Year Parade.The family were thoroughly enjoying the festivities, whereas I just couldn't tune in, as I had a very uneasy dragging, empty feeling in the pit of my stomach, that gut feeling, which somehow made my thoughts turn to my father.I told my husband that I had to leave them urgently and go back and check that he was alright, we didn't have mobiles then! On my arrival at his home, I found to my shock he was lying outstretched on the bathroom floor, where he had fallen and was not able to move.Somehow even without an alarm or mobile phone he had managed to communicate his predicament to me, strange indeed, he died in hospital 11 days after.

Time stood still

The subject of co-incidence has long fascinated me, since my mother's death in fact 30.6.1973. Soon after her death, on our way home, my father asked me if I had noticed the time of her death, I told him it had been at midday, but when I checked my watch, which was a Tissot ,and up until then had always worked perfectly, I noticed it too had stopped at her time of death, midday! This seemed strange at the time, but then things became even more eerie when on entering our home, dad and I noticed the clock in our living room had stopped inexplicably at the same time too!

A surprise meeting

I volunteered to work for a 6 hour shift at a as a vaccinator at a centre which was operating for 12 hours a day for 6 days a week. I picked the 2-8pm on a Saturday afternoon. There were 8 vaccination booths and mine was positioned near the exit of the room. As I was working I was greeted by my neighbour who had just had his vaccination.

Finding my friend's wallet in a random neighborhood

I was invited by some friends to go to some sort of dance competition event our friend hosted at a high school in an area somewhere in Los Angeles that I'm not familiar and I would have to look it up to find it again. We parked in a residential area, and it was not well-lit. My friends found a wallet on the ground and I saw that they were trying to contact the person on Facebook to get the wallet back to him. I looked at the driver's license and saw that it was a friend of mine (at the time more of an acquaintance introduced to me by a good friend), so I contacted him to tell him we found his wallet. My friend lives in San Diego and came up to check out the competition. I don't think it's a big deal when I run into people in public coincidently, but my friends finding a wallet in the dark and it happened to be a person I know is kind of random.

neighboor lying on the floor in the corridor, next day take a cab and cabdrivers son has identical name with neighbor

I live in a 8 story multi-tenant apartment house in the city. One day I heard something outside my door, I opened the door and there was my neighbor from the apartment across my own, lying on the floor with a man and a women that I don't know helping him. I asked if I can help [this neighbor is middle aged and I think he has some mental issues but I don't know exactly what he has or what happened]. The women replied [rudely] for me to close the door because it 'disturbing' or something [I am not in good terms with this neighbor because he is not an honest person and has done a few bad things in the past but when I saw that he was in a bad situation- I wanted to help. Plus- that women doesn't even live there (perhaps his relative?) that was rude of her.]. Anyway- the next day I took my car to the yearly checkup in the garage. It took a few hours so I walked to my mother's house and on the way back I took a cab. I sat at the back seat and there was a placard with the name of the driver [this car belong to...]. I realized the last name was the same as my neighbor [this is not a very common name in my country].

Dream of a telephone call and wake up-call after a few seconds

I was a classical musician. There was a conductor, which I was very fond off and new from a young age. I haven't heard from him in years and also didn't think about him recently [in the time of the coincidence]. I was sleeping in the morning and before I woke up I dreamed the conductor calls me [telephone]. I woke up and AFTER A FEW SECONDS there was a phone call- it was him.

Car Repair Coincidence

In July 1969 on a journey from Norwich to Nottingham, my Fiat 500 car broke down in Downham Market. I needed a knife to repair the distributor feed. On knocking on the first door, the lady fetched her son who worked as a mechanic in the Fiat garage in March Cambs. Incidentally all six members of our family were born on a Saturday, admittedly I am a twin which reduces the odds,

Never let me go

Went down a rabbit hole on wikipedia and ended up reading about a book from the early 2000s' I'd never heard of. Listening to the radio later that day they are interviewing the author of the same book and talking about the themes in his book and how they apply to today.

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