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.

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Well I Never!

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

EBAY BUYER WITH THE SAME NAME!

25TH DECEMBER 2007 i sold an item on ebay (item number 120197295767), having been contacted by a potential buyer, asking me if it was ok to pick up the item in person........he came from around 1.5 miles up the road and it turned out he was called Simon Buckley.......the same name as me! i thought this was freaky...what are the random chances of having a buyer on ebay with the same name living just round the corner!

siblings meeting

My friend, myself and anothr friend were returning home to Newcastle upon Tyne by train from a weekend in Edinburgh on pre-booked seats. Her brother knew nothing of this trip and had been to Edinburgh to see his soldier son off back to Germany from Edinburgh airport. He had intended to catch a later train back to his home in Durham but decided on the spur of the moment to go earlier and went to the station to catch a random train. He had not booked and it could have been a number of trains. Our train came in and we went to our coach to get to our seats ( which were numbered). As we approached the seats, we saw that a man was sitting in my friend's seat. Against amazing odds, it was her brother! of all the trains, carriages and seats he could have chosen, he sat in his sisters seat. The seat next to her was a free seat and he continued the journey with us.

overturned van

i was driving about 60 miles from my home in neath south wales towards hay on wye , when i noticed out of the corner of my eye a transit van had gone through the hedge and was upside down in the field . I stopped my car a few yards down the road ran back and the driver was just clammbering out and was on his feet , after i had asked the usual are you ok i recognised him as being from my town and sort of new him to say hello to, a couple of minuites later another motorist stopped , asked the same questions are you alright ect , i then turned to the second motorist and recognised him as being my sister in laws next door neigbour who i shared a bbq with a few weeks earlier . he lived in stourport on severn

Keeping a secret

I lived in Suffolk and wanted to buy a small piece of land next to my house that was origionally part of my garden before I bought the house off a large estate a few years earlier. It was part of the Helmingham Hall Estate which meant dealing with their land agent/estate manager. Subsequent to his agreement to sell the land to me, events arose that caused me to want to sell the house but to still go through with buying the piece of adjoining land before moving. I was very keen that the estate manager who had agreed to sell me the land should not find out that I was going to sell up, in case he decided not to go through with it. I found a farm in Surrey, about 120 miles from Ipswich. Having put in a bid on the place, I called into the London office of the Estate Agents handling the sale of the farm that I wanted to buy in Surrey. Imagine my surprise when the estate agent in London said that the person selling the farm in Surrey also, like me, lived in Suffolk. The person selling the farm in Surrey was the same man with whom I had been negotiating the purchase of the piece of land that I wanted to buy in Suffolk. I didn't get the farm, as my bid was not accepted.

Dream of Death

While on holidays I had a dream that a man who lived in my street had died. When I came back from holidays I found that he hadn't died - but his wife had!

Wife to be

In 1986, whilst visiting friends, they said that i should meet up with Joanne, a friend of theirs. They thought we would make a good couple. After several months and misted contact opportunities we eventually met up. Several months of flirting followed and eventually we got together. 2 years into dating it was Joanne's 21st birthday. Her mum gave her a 'photo history' of her first 21 years. Several years later we married. All was happy. When we decided to move house, we went through all our books and paper work. Looking at her 21st birthday folder, I noticed one photo that stood out although I did not know why. Upon closer inspection I could see a small figure in the background. It was a photo of Joanne's first day at primary school. Up in the background was one loan figure waving. No other kids in the picture. After scanning and enhancing the photo, I knew... yes.. that little boy up on the hill was me. I never knew Joanne until we met in 1986, yet I was looking out for her. We now have two gorgeous boys, a dog and one hell of a loving relationship. It will be our 10th anniversary next month.

Simon H

Bit of background to this one! Two years ago, I appeared on Popmaster on Radio 2 as a contestant, which I recorded, and have been able to convert to a CD recording of the broadcast. I also have a device called a Brennan, onto which I have loaded my entire CD collection. There are about 16,000 tracks on the device, which I often play in "random" mode. Two weeks ago, I was replying to a chatty e-mail from a friend, in which he reminded me that a few of us had had a mini-reunion exactly two years earlier, and asking if I had realised the anniversary. In my reply, I stated that I had realised, as it was also pretty much exactly two years since my Popmaster appearance. Halfway through my typing the sentence about Popmaster, the Brennan suddenly started playing the recording of my appearance (entirely at random from the 16,000 or so tracks!). Presume the odds on this are about 16,000 to 1? Just to further add to the coincidence, a couple of days later, when I again had the Brennan on in the background, the Popmaster appearance was played again!

Number plate coincidence

In 1987 I was a seventeen year old who had not long past my driving test and was car mad, I was round a friends house in Putnoe in Bedford and we were looking through Autotrader magazine seeing which cars we could afford next, (I only had a Vauxhall Chevette at the time!) soon we started looking at the personalised No. plates and I said I would like the No. plate LJH 666 as my Initials are LJH and I wanted something people would notice! later on after a couple of cups of coffee I was on the drive home, when pulling out of Queens Drive I got behind an old Triumph 2000 - it was then I saw its No. Plate LJH 666L!!! I had never seen this car before as i would have remembered it and have never seen it since, it made me look up to the sky and say "I was only joking" Lee from Bedford

Second World War

My father served in the army in the second world war from 1942 to 1945 according to a Royal Artillery Regiment welfare card that I have in his name. During the later war years he served in Germany and if I remember correctly, found a photograph in a dug out on the banks of the Rhine, either torn from a magazine or still in the magazine, I can't now remember, of a school in Sidcup, Kent England Our home was in Sidcup, Kent and my brother was 11 years old in July 1944 and had won a scholarship to attend this particular school in September 1944. I still have the dog eared photograph with my father's handwriting on the margin saying 'found in dug out on banks of Rhine', no date unfortunately but if I remember rightly he sent it to my mother after he found it. The school was then called The Chislehurst & Sidcup Grammar School for Boys, I believe it is now called Kemsing High School, although not certain, and is situated on the Sevenoaks By Pass at Crittalls Corner, Sidcup, Kent. The caption under the photograph reads; 'A School of Tomorrow : in fact, of today. You can see it for yourself at Sidcup, Kent. It is the local Central School.

MY MOTHER'S RING

My story concerns my mother's diamond ring that my father gave to me on my birthday in July 1992 a year after she had died. I kept the ring in its box and only wore it when we went out in the evening or on special occasions. In February 1999 we moved house and when I wanted to wear the ring one time, I opened the box only to find the ring missing. I had lost it! I looked everywhere but couldn't find it. Needless to say, I didn't tell my dad. In April 1999, we upped sticks from Yorkshire and went to live in the Algarve where we rented an apartment for 2 months before moving yet again. In November of that year, we paid a visit to England staying with friends in Hertfordshire before going to a wedding in Milton Keynes and up to Yorkshire to stay with my dad in the bungalow he had shared with my mum. As soon as we arrived, I went to our bedroom to unpack and when I lifted one of my jumpers out of the case, my diamond ring fell out. I couldn't believe it, particularly as I had worn that jumper only 2 days before and we had packed and unpacked so many times with all our moves. Coincidence?

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