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!

a stroke of luck

This tale may seem to be more a story of good luck than coincidence, were it not for the circumstances. back in the 1960s I was a poor apprentice, living in digs in a northern town, and this Thursday morning I was poorer than normal. I had not a penny to my name and at 730 I was walking the street to get to work, a good three miles away. In the gutter I spotted a scrap of brown paper. Actually it was more than a scrap of bwon paper - it was a ten shilling note. Probably value around ten pounds today. No more the poor apprentice, I had the fare for the next bus, not to mention money for tea and lunch before the wages van arrived in the afternoon!

Chance meeting with close colleague in remote Rajasthan

Friday 29th January 2010. My partner and I (Mary James) were on holiday, horse riding and bird-watching in Rajasthan, staying for a few days in a beautiful but fairly remote 'heritage hotel' in Rohet, on the edge of the desert, owned by a resident Rajput family. We were travelling independently and there were very few Europeans around. We saw none during the day although an occasional coach drew in of an evening for an over-night stay. After a morning ride we went to the restaurant for lunch. There were only two other people there and they just happened to be the person I had worked closest with for the previous 8 years, and his wife. (We have photos as evidence). Now, my partner and I had planned the holiday for some time and just before we left I found out that my colleague was going to New Delhi for a conference around the same time. So, I forwarded my itinerary. He paid little or no attention to this because he thought there would be no chance that we could meet. However, during his stay he had a meeting in Jodhpur and on the way there his driver decided to drop him off at Rohetgarh for lunch.

Mrs. Diana George (nee Latchem)

In the mid-70's my husband and I were living in Sunderland. My husband invited a work colleague and his wife to meet us for an evening meal at a pub. Getting to know his wife we got to talking about our surnames before we were married. I said, 'you will probably not have heard of mine as it is quite rare - it is LATCHEM'. 'Well,' she said, you won't believe it, but it is mine as well. Like all families, there is a romantic story, and ours was that one of the sons of our ancestors who lived in Somerset, ran away with the local Squires daughter to Northern Ireland, and where did this new friend come from, Northern Ireland. In those days there was not a lot of interest in heritage, as there is now, so of course we have lost contact. How I wish I had kept in contact.

home is where the art is (sorry!)

Around 1949, when my husband was about 9 or 10, his grandmother gave him a catalogue,( a largish book), of an art exhibition called ‘The Londoner’s England’, which had reproductions of all the works in the exhibition. It was a rather strange birthday present to give a child of that age, but it was one of the few things he kept from his childhood. In 1979 we moved to a house which was in very poor condition and needed a lot of work. When I cleared out the cellar, which was full of junk left by the previous owners, I found a couple of grimy pictures stuck in a corner. I could see that one was a good quality watercolour and had a good frame, so I cleaned it up and saw that the frame had a brass label attached. It said ‘The Chancery House, Harlow’, by Michael Rothenstein, an artist of repute whose work I was familiar with. On the back of the picture I saw to my amazement that the label attached said ‘The Londoner’s England’. I raced upstairs and found my husband’s book, looked through it, and there was the reproduction of this watercolour.

Chance Meeting

I live in Nottinghamshire and worked in Mansfield. A work colleague was visiting his sister in law in Woodley near Reading. He went into a café for a coffee. At the same table was a stranger. The two struck up a conversation. During the conversation it was established that the person was a close friend of mine who had moved from Nottinghamshire to live in Woodley!

Reading the Paper and Listening to the Radio

I have been increasingly surprised over the years when I have experienced the following co-incidence. I am sitting at home reading the newspaper and at the same time listening to the radio or watching the television. As I come across a particular word in the text of the newspaper, it is immediately used on the radio or television. I do not mean ordinary frequently used words like 'and' or 'an' or 'they'. Nor do I mean words currently in the news which are likely to appear in both like 'Syria' or 'governemnt'. The most recent example was the other day. I was reading an obituary in the Daily Telegraph where someone was described as a 'legend'. Immediately the conversation on the radio used the word 'legend' as they discussed a Greek myth. Ian

The Back of Beyond

About 30 years ago I was working in a customers house in Aberdeen, finishing off some joinery work, the day before going on a driving holiday around Europe with my new wife. I was working up til 10 at night to complete it as I wanted it finished before going off. We set off from our farmhouse near Banchory, Aberdeen, and drove around Southern Europe for almost a month before ending up, on a whim, in the Camargue in a campsite near Les Saintes Maries de la Mer. Well off the beaten track. We were relaxing next to our tent when we saw a large campervan with a trailer park in the bay opposite us and 10 or so people come out and start to talk quite loudly. We hadn't heard a British voice in almost a month and we groaned when we heard Scots accents. However, we girded our loins and went across and said hello and were invited to have a drink with them. We discovered that the driver and head of the family, was the TV producer boss of the woman whose job I had worked late into the night to finish. Coincidental enough, especially as the Camargue was still a remote place in the early 80's with strong warnings about bandits and not stopping.

chance meeting of close UK work colleague in New Zealand

Day before husband & I left for campervan tour of New Zealand, I ran a meeting (at Glos Hosp, UK) which was chaired by a senior nurse I had known for many yrs. We laughed when both of us said we were going to NZ (she 2 wks;me 3wks); Megan and I didn't discuss itinerary except I was mainly sightseeing S.Island and she only in N.Island. Adrian & I spent more time than planned in S.Island but I v.much wanted to see Napier (Art Deco town on N.Island) so we detoured there for few hrs en-route to Auckland to fly home next day. We parked, paddled in sea then walked into town to admire buildings - suddenly I heard a call "Ann" but couldn't be for me so kept walking, then a car reversed back and it was Megan ! She and husband were visiting his parent's house many miles away & Mother said "go out for the day we'll look after the children". Megan & husband never been to Napier before - "some where different to go". We took picture and went on our way amazed.

bumping into friends

Whilst traveling around Brazil me and my friend checked into a hostel in Punte del Este. After a day we met a German guy named Dominic. We got chatting and he had heard that the best way to see the island was to hite a car. So we did. We spent 2 days traveling around exploring the island. We had pre-arranged plans to depart for our next destination so we exchanged the usual facebook details with Dominic and went our seperate ways. We didn't really hear from him again. 6 months later, after we returned to England, a group of me and my friends went down to London for a weekend. As usual we spent the day in pub watching football and at half time during the game i decided to make a phone call some to some of the lads so we could arrange where to meet up later in the day. I decided to go outside to make this call so that i could get some fresh air in the process. Whilst making the phone call Dominic walked past. We hadn't spoke to him since Brazil and it seemed very coinsidental that we were both in London at that time and i had decided to go outside to make the phone call.

post script to the post spiritual connection

I watched the Jonathon Ross show today on 'catch up tv' as when it was on last night I was on the lap top in another room typing my post (something I had been meaning to do since the article was featured in the mail on Sunday a few weeks ago - being a teacher, I have only just got round to it as it is half term and I was having a clear out of the old paper I had kept for this reason.) I discovered when watching it today that Keira Knightley was on talking about her latest film which it turns out is based on Jung and Freud - looking back at the time I was writing my post referring to Jung and Freud, this would have co-incided with the time she was talking about it on the programme shown last night. I had not previously known who was on the programme, what her film was about or had any intention of making the additional reference to what I knew about Jung and Freud until I started writing the post.

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