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!

Dad's fitting tribute

A few years ago when my dear old Dad was dying my thoughts turned to the funeral arrangements and fitting tributes. Dad has spent twenty years as a navigator in the RAF and I had daydreamed that I could organise some sort of flypast. I mentioned this to a friend of mine but otherwise kept it to myself.There were several airfields close by and it was not beyond the realms of possibility but would have meant changing the funeral venue from Cheshire to Warwickshire. However when Dad finally died, I was too exhausted to contemplate this and rather dissapointedly conceded that it wasn't going to happen. The funeral took place in Sandbach,Cheshire with a transfer to the crematorium in Crewe. I was at least able to give the tribute. The service was pleasant if a little quiet but it was a reasonable send-off albeit not the one I had hoped for. The cortege assembled and we set off for Crewe. The cortege came to a halt in Crewe due to traffic. How we came to be in that exact spot at that precise moment we'll never know. Anything might have happened to cause us to pass minutes earlier or later. Looking straight ahead I saw some lights in the sky spaced out horizontally.

mr

My wife died in 1997.<br /> My grandson, who was 11 at the time, was heartbroken.<br /> When he started his own family 14 years later, he decided to name his yet unborn daughter after his nan.<br /> The child was due on March 2. After a week, still no sign, until March 10 when suddenly she was born.<br /> My late wife's birthday is March 10.<br /> Co-incidence, or what?

Creepy screen

I worked as a translator for a small Welsh export company who had dealings with Germany, and helped in negotiations to set up a partnership with a company in Germany. This business cooperation collapsed when the Welsh company discovered that the German firm was having their material copied cheaply in Romania. Time passed, the Export Manager I had worked with moved off to pastures new, but the company decided to give it a second try, and got me to translate the history of their activities in Germany for their new partners. I was typing the name of the previous German partner company's Managing Director on the screen when the phone rang. It was the previous Export Manager, whom I hadn't heard from for some time, and was now working far away. "Guess what?" he said. "I've just got back from a trade fair in Munich, and I heard that old Herr...... has just died." He wouldn't believe that the last word typed onto my screen was the dead man's name.

Crossraods

As a student, I booked into the Youth Hostel at Kolding, in Denmark, late one afternoon. There were no other hostelers there, so I checked in, and flipped back through the diary they kept for comments - the day before, two friends of mine from Brittany whom I had got to know when they were students in Wales had signed in for one night, and had a strongly worded entry about how Brittany was NOT France! Later, a Swiss student arrived, and it turned out that he knew a pen-pal of mine who lived on Fair Isle. Later, an Ethiopian student arrived - he was on a trip anti-clockwise around the Baltic. We were all flabbergasted when later that evening, another Ethiopian student arrived. This fellow was from the same village as the other, and was also doing a round the Baltic trip, but clockwise. Neither knew the other was in Europe. This must have made Kolding the crossroads of the world, not just of Denmark!

Mr Derek

Unexpected Encounter In the 1970s my family always took our caravan abroad, but in 1973 we were persuaded by some good friends to go with them to the north of Scotland. We set off from our home in Kingsbridge, South Devon with only a vague idea of where we were heading. Almost a week later we pulled into a very basic campsite - no more than a crofter’s field – on a single track road not far from Lochinver on the NW coast. We had just parked and were having a drink outside the caravan when we heard a loud crash from the road and saw that a family car had run into a ditch. Luckily no-one was hurt. We were amazed to see that the people in the car were close neighbours of ours in Kingsbridge; we often met socially and the husband was also a colleague of mine at a local school. None of us knew that the other family had any plans to visit Scotland that summer. The husband who was driving was so staggered to see us in this remote part 700 miles from Kingsbridge that he had taken his eye off the road. Luckily we were able to pull them out of the ditch and provide them with a hot coffee!

My Mother and the RNLI

This story is entirely true and took place towards the end of November 2011. Your comments and reflections on the events described would be of interest. My mother died at the end of November. My wife and I planned the funeral following my mother’s wishes, but she did not indicate whether she wanted flowers. We felt that it would be more appropriate to hold a collection for charity but as my mother did not show any particular allegiance to a charity we decided before the funeral was planned to have a collection for the RNLI. We have particular interests in that charity and as my mother lived in Lytham St Annes, there was a local interest particularly as the media were reminding us of a great loss of life when the St. Annes lifeboat tragedy occurred. This was the decided and I went to LSA to make the arrangements. When I arrived at my mother’s flat I opened the mailbox and found that the top letter was from the RNLI requesting personally, from my mother, a donation. I subsequently went to see my mother’s solicitor with papers requested by him and found that the waiting room was full of leaflets and posters from the RNLI asking that they be remembered when drafting a will.

Pattern of births

My Farther is 1 or 7 children, all of his brothers and sisters (including him have at least 2, 3 or 4 children). The children that has been born in to these families have always be born in an order of alternating sex. I.e. if the first child was a boy, the second child has always been a girl and the third child was always a boy and so on. There was a total of 20 children born in this way to the 7 families without 1 exception to the rule The pattern has now continued on to the next generation and all of the children born to either my father or one of his brothers or sisters who have gone on to have children have also experienced this pattern of births without a singe exception. There are now 14 children born to 6 different sets of parents in this way.

South African visit reveals coincidence

My parents were visiting her brother who lives in South Africa. My mum was browsing through her brothers visitors book and noticed a very familiar address. It was my next door neighbour whose name my parents didn't know at that time. My next door neighbours had been staying with friends in South Africa and those friends had taken them to visit my uncle and they had signed the visitors book. When my mum came home and told me, it sent shivers down my spine.

New friends who discovered our fathers were raised as neighbours.

On my first day at a new school where I knew no one, a girl approached me to befriend me as I looked so lost. We began to spend a lot of time together when we could though we lived in different towns. One day she mentioned the street that her gran lived in, and I was shocked as my grandmother lived there also. We discovered that our fathers had grown up together (living almost opposite eachother)and played cricket together, so it was nice that we were able to get them together too. Furthermore, my mother as a child had played with my friends father as they had mutual friends who owned a farm and they were often there at the same time, before she even met my father.39 years later, we are still great friends and all of our parents are still alive and occasionally get to meet up. We often marvel at all of this and how out of 150 pupils she chose me to befriend.

Panamanian small world

Between the ages of 6 and 8 I lived with my family in Panama. After this we returned to the UK. At the age of 19 I answered an ad in a local newsagents window and got a job as an au pair in Uruguay. When I told my mum that I was going there she remarked that she didn't know anything about Uruguay other than one of their (my parents') good friends in Panama had a mother who was Uruguayan by birth. I thought no more about this until the first day of my new job. I woke up after a very late night arrival and went downstairs. To my suprise my employer had gone out and an older lady greeted me instead. She had been asked to show me around and keep me company for the day. It became clear during this course of the day that not only was this the very lady my mum had mentioned but the house I was living and working in was built on land that she owned.

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