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!

Tale with a religious aspect.

Several years ago (2002 approx) I experienced this coincidence which I still think about from time to time. Although I am not a practicing – ‘anything’, this tale does have a religious aspect to it. I used to work with a person who I knew was a devout Christian, as was his wife, and when I had the opportunity to visit a deaf school in the Holy Land, where my daughter was working, I purchased a number of craft products that the school children had produced. There were some wooden carvings on sale and I noticed that some of these included fish shaped band-saw cut-outs. On closer inspection I noticed that the word Jesus had been incorporated into the design of this carving and I immediately thought that this would be an appropriate present to give to my ex-colleague. I returned home but it was some time before I had the opportunity to give this to my friend since he didn’t live near. About a year later I had cause to visit somewhere beyond where my ex-colleague lived and so I placed the carving in a polythene shopping bag, placed it in the boot of my car and set off on my journey.

Christmas cards

My husband and I this Christmas both bought eachother the same card. We both went out shopping on different days and bought the same card and presented to eachother on Christmas day, very strange!

chance meeting

A few years ago my wife and I made a visit to Yorkshire from Cornwall. Whilst we were up there we had the notion to try and find our nephew whom we hadn't seen for 25yrs but knew that he lived in Wakefield but we had no address or phone number. When we arrived in Wakefield we pulled into a retail park to see if we could find a public telephone with a directory, but had no success.On returning to our car, I had to step aside to allow a white Volvo estate to reverse out of the space next to ours. As the driver turned his head to see, I recognized it was our nephew whom we hadn't seen for 25yrs.I slapped my hand on the roof of his car and he stopped and got out. He was amazed to see us both standing there, as we were to see him. We then followed him to his home where we had a marvelous day catching up. Tony Perry

BIRTHDAY COINCIDENCE

I was born on 29.05.1965 and my cousin was born on 29.05.1967. My son was born on 14.03.1990 and her son was born on 14.03.1994. Our other cousin also gave birth to her daughter on 14.03.1998.

Lhasa and Essex

My wife and I went to Tibet about 30 years ago very soon after China permitted visitors. Earlier visitors had been few in number. We were a group of 10. When we arrived in Lhasa we visited the main temple, the Jokhang. A monk approached us, spoke no English, but smiled and from out of his robe drew a postcard with a sepia photograph of a village green in Essex. On the green was a group of Morris dancers. One of our group, then in his 60s, recognised himself in the group about 30 years earlier. When he exclaimed in surprise, and told us it was him, the monk inclined his head and smiled as if to him it was no surprise.

Vision

Many years ago I was awakend in the night by an old boyfriend who appered to be sitting at the end of my bed smiling at me. I hadn't seen or heard from him for well over 7 years, and hadn't given him much thought either. He was Hungarian and I had spent the best part of 2 years flying backwards and forwards to Budapest to see him, as he was not allowed to come to the West, because at that time, Hungary was still behind the 'Iron curtain'. His vision that night was extremely powerful and I was quite shaken by it. I mentioned it to my work colleagues the next day and then tried to forget about it. Two days later when I arrived home, I found a crumpled piece of paper pushed through my letterbox, with a message from him, to say he was in London on business for a few days, and would love to catch up. He still had my address and had come to find me. When we met up the next day, I told him about the vision I had experienced and he said he had been thinking about me for most of the flight, that very night when 'he' woke me up! Maybe this is more of an ESP experience......?

tracing family

I was adopted as a baby but traced my family to discover that unknowingly as an adult I moved near them, they lived one side of the park and I lived the other side, I also found that I had twin brothers who were also adopted and discovered that I had moved to an area where they were taken to when they were adopted and they in turn then moved with their adopted parents to west country and lived within two streets of our natural family. The coincidence was that we had unknowingly lived quite close to one another the areas covered were London, Cambridgeshire and Dorset Mrs.Marie B

Former colleague

1) I work in a hospital in London. A Professor who had retired from the department 10 years ago and now lives in Gloucester occasionally popped in to say hello when he was in the area. I had not seen him for 2 years when what looked like a personal letter arrived for him. I e-mailed him to ask where I should send it and half an hour later he arrived at my office - and he doesn't have one of those phones on which he can pick up e-mails! 2) Some years ago two colleagues bumped into each other in a tiny village in Tuscany.

Resturant meeting

In the early to mid 90's I was in a dance troupe. There were 6 of us and we lived within driving distance of each other spread across Surrey and South London and occaisionally met up for drinks until the group dispanded in the late 90's. We remaind what you would call occaisional freinds and still sea each other maybe once a year these days. A couple of years after the group split up, my then girlfreind of many years and 2 long term freinds decided to go to dinner and booked a restaurnat that we had frequented many years back with the troupe on the purley way, Crawley called Rayon D'or at Airport House. This is a 50 mile journey for us but the memories of the food and the venue made the journey worth while. On entering the resturant we were seated next to a table of 8 people, 4 of whom were from the dance troupe celebrating one of their birthdays. It was the first time they had visited this resturant sinse we last went there as a group. We had not spoken or met up recent to this chance meeting and certainly not made mention of the Rayon D'or as a nice place to eat.

Three friends

An old friend of mine contacted me on Facebook from a cable laying ship off Labrador to request online friendship and within a couple of hours of accepting, a friend of his who at that time was navigating a yacht out of Gozo also requested friendship. I had not at that time met the second friend but it turned out that the second friend was a close friend of our local pub landlord who is a good friend of mine. It made the World seem a very small place at the time, connected by Norwich Labrador and Gozo. We also bumped into a friend from Norwich on the small viewing platform at the top of Corfe Castle in Dorset.

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