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!

Same house

In 1969 we sold our house in Hampshire and later that year went to live temporarily in the USA, where I was to work on an international project. Soon after we arrived we were guests at a dinner party hosted by another ex-pat couple from London, whom we had never met. Among the other guests were the hostess's brother and sister-in-law, on holiday from England. During dinner they began talking about the new home to which they had recently moved, and it soon became apparent that this was the house we had sold earlier in the year.

Newspaper coincidence

On Thursday 26 April 2012 while I was working at the local Archive as a Volunteer, another Volunteer was unfolding an old newspaper that had been donated. She found an article on a local family with a photo of the founding settler and his family tree had been printed in the newspaper and I helped her use the photocopier to make a copy of the family information to file in the Archive Families file. On Sunday 29 April 2012 my mother came to visit. She had been cleaning out cupboards in her home and brought me four old newspapers. I opened the first one of the four, and there was the same photo staring back at me; it was the same March 1952 newspaper. I decided I had better look at this family tree with more care, and among the names of descendants I found a family that I recognized from my own family research. One of the grandchildren of the founder had married one of my distant cousins children. I missed the connection the first time round, so fate gave me a second opportunity to get information on this family. Janet New Zealand

Birthdays

My father's birthday was August 4th 1893. WW1 would later begin on August 4th 1914. My birthday is September 3rd 1932 and WW2 would later begin on 3rd September 1939.

Who Built this Hotel?

I was visiting Europe and decided i would make it my business to find out more about my great-uncle, a London solicitor, who I had strangely never heard any mention of by anyone in my father's family. I spent long hours poring over computer records and confirmed the names of his wife and children shortly before travelling to London (this was not easy for various reasons). The second weekend I was in London my relatives took me to a hotel they love in rural South Wales which they have been visiting regularly for several years. We had already discovered coincidentally that the hotel (built as a country house) was a beautiful half hour walk on foot from a house previously owned by another part of our family, but this was with my mother's family and not even remotely connected to my father's family. While my relatives enjoyed the River Usk, I spent an afternoon reading books in the hotel library and discovered the building we were in had been built by - wait for it - the father of my long lost great-uncle's bride.

Death dates of three generations plus!

A cousin of mine died 4th Dec 2007. His father died 4th Dec 1980 His grandfather died 4th Dec 1913 My cousin had 3 Christian names. Two after his 2 grandfathers, the 3rd name was after the Saint of the church where his father was Vicar. The Saint was St Nicholas. He too died Dec 4th!!! Quite a big coincidence don't you agree?!! (I could probably send a copy of the tree if you'd like it, but as one member of the close family is still alive, I'd need to ask her permission first)

Double coincidence?

In the early 1970's, just before starting at Leeds Polytechnic, I went on holiday to Tenerife with my parents, and met a young man from Wakefield, who it turns out was also due to start at Leeds Polytechnic, though admittedly we were doing different courses. We kept up the friendship and often saw each other. My boyfriend went to Cambridge University and one of his friends had a girlfriend who came from Wakefield. The first time I met her I said the usual "I know someone from Wakefield" not expecting her to know him, but it turns out that she lived next door to the boy I knew at Leeds.

Same Place

When I retired to Penistone in Yorkshire I researched my family history including three brothers who were the first European settlers in Otago, New Zealand, where they established a whaling station. I posted a request for information on a New Zealand genealogical website. Daphne responded and provided information and also told me that as a child she had sometimes played in the trypot on the quayside at Timaru which the brothers had used for rendering the whale blubber. I thanked her for all her help and said that if she had any English ancestors I would gladly endeavour to help her with research. I had never mentioned where I lived, so imagine our surprise when she told me that she wished to research her mother's forebears who came from a place in Yorkshire called Penistone.

People and Places

This story involves several coincidences in which a village in Gloucestershire features. My husband and I moved to the said village several years ago from north Lancashire following a change of employment by my husband. We had no previous knowledge of this village, indeed we had never heard of it until we started house hunting. Some years later we bumped into a couple who had lived in the same very small village in Lancashire who had recently also moved to our village in Gloucestershire. I had known the wife in Lancashire (we were in the same choir) but we were not close friends by any means and certainly had not kept in touch. It was a massive surprise to find them living a few minute's walk away. But the coincidences do not end there. A few years ago our younger daughter obtained a lectureship at Oxford University (having taken her first and higher degrees at Cambridge and with no prior Oxford connections) and became a Fellow of of one of the colleges.

Same House

From 1937 to 1947 our family lived in Gedling Rectory, Nottinghamshire. My sister Mary later married Peter from Exeter, Devon. When we researched his ancestry we discovered that one of his great-great-grandmothers, Caroline Smelt, had been born in Gedling Rectory in 1795.

Translator turned cousin

I had been exchanging emails with several new found cousins in Hungary. But they did not speak English and I did not know Hungarian. I would pick through these emails with a Hungarian dictionary, but was sure that I was missing some of the information in these emails. By chance, my son worked at NYU with a Hungarian woman and he offered to ask her to translate the emails for me. Unfortunately, she had gone on vacation. That night, my son was entering his apartment when the door of the apartment next to him opened. Out stepped a young Hungarian girl and my son asked her if she would do the translation. She agreed and after doing the translation, told my son that her mother's maiden name was the same as the name (Karli) I was researching. My son emailed me this information and I told him that the town was Ratot (now Gyulafiratot) and was just north of Lake Balaton in Hungary. He said that she also mentioned Lake Balaton and that he would forward this information to her. Within 2 hours I received an email that this girl was my 3rd cousin once removed. Our nearest common ancestor was born 193 years ago.

Pages