Cambridge Coincidences Collection

My husband and I are were born in Australia. During WW1 his grandfather, Claude, (an engineer, who was also Australian) came over to England and worked as an engineer in a relatively small Vickers armaments factory in Birmingham. According to family history tales, my grandfather, William (an engineer, born and bred in Birmingham) also worked at Vickers during the war. This all seemed too unlikely until my sister-in-law found a photo of the staff of the factory (20 or so men) taken with her grandfather, Claude posing in the front row - and there was the proof - my grandfather very clearly appearing in the back row. After the war, Claude returned to Australia and had a family and my grandfather, William, eventually emigrated to New Zealand. When Wiliam's wife died and his own health broke down my mother (his daughter) went to live with relatives in Sydney where she married and I was born. 60 years after the end of WW1 my husband and I met and married in Sydney and, now, interestingly, live in England.

Whist undergoing an indentured engineering apprenticeship during 1955 - 1960 several apprentice friends in my year were often mentioning a girl called Gwen, who was a friend of their girlfriends. Most of these friends lived in and around London, and I lived in Kent, so we never met up socially. However, one day my friend Colin in 1961 during a general conversation mentioned Gwen was getting married, having never met, I asked how old she was, (why I don’t know) During that year, I unfortunately had a motor cycle accident that put me into hospital for 12 weeks; followed by 12 weeks physiotherapy, also ending a relationship I was in. The road in which the accident took place was Gibbon Road, outside Nunhead Cemetery, where an elderly gentleman leaned over (I was lying on the road) and said don’t worry mate you don’t have far to go. Unbeknown to me at the time was that Gibbons was in fact Gwen's maiden name. Gwen married in March 1963 but separated some weeks later filing for divorce siting cruelty as the reason. For the 1963 August Bank Holiday all the above friends were arranging a camping holiday break at Newhaven, Sussex to which I was invited.

A friend of mine had many cousins living in adjoining states. On one of his visits to these cousins, he asked me and 2 other guys to go along with him. It turned out to be a total blast. A good time was had by all, both guests and hosts. Word of our visit began to spread to other cousins and low and behold, we started getting invitations to visit other families. We went on 2 more visits and had an equally good time at each visit. It was totally amazing to me that these people would just open their doors (and hearts) to 3 guys that just happen to hang out with their relative. I never had the joy of having cousins, and I looked forward to these visits. My friend announced that we were invited to Pittsburgh for some big celebration at a local college. They have already arranged dates for us for a dance to held on Saturday night. This presented a problem for me. I had been dating a local girl, named Alice, for 6 months. I decided to go on the trip, but failed to mention to Alice about the date that was arranged for me. While talking with my friend, he mentioned that we were really going to a town out side of Pittsburgh called Penn Hills. I almost fainted.

My Mother and I regulary have the experience of phoning each other at the same time but the coincidence I wish to report is this...one day I phoned her and said I had purchased a very unusual blouse,she said so had she (She lives in Ipswich and I live near Norwich) I said I was sure mine was more different than hers as mine was short at the front and had a long tail at the back. It turned out she had bought the same blouse at the same time but we were in different places!!! Another thing that was strange is that when I did my family research the things my distant relatives believed or did ,I do !