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!

Finding our lost family

This incident happened in the early 1960's to my Parents :- > > My Grandparents were refugees from Belgium during the First World War. They settled in the UK and had 7 children (2 of whom were born in Belgium) one of which was my mother. In the early 60's my parents along with my mother's brother and wife went to Belgium to try and make contact with the Belgian side of our family. May Grandfather had had a little contact with his Belgian relations but it was rather sparse. My parents duly arrived in Brussels and took residence in the Hotel Metropole. The our of then soon went out to the nearest bar but were having trouble ordering and making themselves understood. A Belgian who was a Concierge from their hotel came and offered to help them with their order. My parents then asked him to join them and bought him a drink. They then explained why they were visiting Belgium and they only thing they had was a picture of a young girl on a swing. The Belgian look at the photo carefully and said that that looks very much like my daughter in law when she was a young girl.

Family location

I live in Lancashire. I started researching my paternal family history abot 10 years ago. My brother and his wife lived in London and were aware of what I was doing but had no knowledge of what I had found - that partly being that our mid 1800's ancestors lived in Hastings, Sussex before returning to London around 1890. My brother/sister-in-law decided to buy a little place for weekends in the mutually agreed area of Bognor Regis. They started off to look at property there but stopped in Hastings for lunch on the way. They looked in an estate agent's window, saw a little house for sale, went to see it on the spur of the moment, put an offer in straight away and bought it. On hearing this I was delighted because I thought they were in a great position to do some family research for me in the local library etc. Some time later I got in touch and asked them to go look at an address where an ancestor had been born if they had time and knew where it was - that was when they became interested in what I was doing because the "address" was only a couple of doors away from their house, the original house no longer there but the foundations still standing.

Wongly delivered letter gets to famous person,

I have the same fairly common surname as a certain film and TV actress (now retired politician)- Glenda Jackson. Having received a letter addressed to her, I was in the process of driving with the letter to the post office when I happened to see her in the street. I stopped, waved and then pushed the letter into her hand saying simply "this is for you". I was in a hurry so just drove off leaving a rather startled Miss Jackson in a Swiss Cottage side-street.

The Battle of Hastings

When I was 18 I worked in a well known shop as an assistance and till girl. I used to have a laugh and a joke with the customers all the time about random stuff. One day, I'm not sure how, I was on the shop floor and myself and a customer began talking about the battle of hastings (I really don't know why). Anyway, when I had finished serving him I was called to the tills. About ten minutes later he brought his items to the tills and I rung them up. The total cost came to £10.66.

Painful dental experience - twins

Based at RAF Acklington,Northumberland circa 1956 I had a tooth removed by the RAF dentist. It transpired that the tooth had a third roopt which was left in underneath the adjacent tooth and this caused infection to occur which required me to spend a couple of days in the sick bay having regular penicillin injections. I then had the third root removed. Going home on leave I met up with my identical twin brother and it turned out that within 24 hours of my initial tooth extraction he had had had the same tooth removed, had subsequent problems with a third root and required further treatment.l I have never experienced anything to suggest that as identical twins wre had any kind of telepathic connection although we still at 75 years old react very similarly to all that goes on around us.

Mr C

1971 I worked on a construction project in Algeria, near the small coastal town of Arzew. My accomadation (one room) was in the redundent ( ) used long ago by the French navy. 1979 I was employed on the construction of a muli story office block in Bahrain. I shared my company apartment with a fellow foreman, who I had never met before and who, in the mid seventies had also worked in Algeria, in Arzew, his office was my old room. Totaly different companies, different continents, eight years apart.

Mrs Barbara P

September 11th Memorial Concert Last September I took part in a memorial concert in The Lincoln Centre, New York to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of 9/11. When I booked into my Manhattan hotel, I was given the key card to my room which happened to be Room 911. On the same occasion, my son and my husband bought a ticket to the concert, completely independantly, about 4 months apart. The concert hall holds about 4,500 people and my husband ended up sitting just 2 seats in front of my son.

in memoriam

When living in San Francisco some years ago I had visited my mother in England for her 80th birthday celebrations. Whilst I was away a close friend in SF died from AIDS. I was devastated and by the time I was able to return home, he had been cremated and his ashes scattered over the Pacific. It was in the days leading up to the annual San Francisco AIDS Walk, to raise funds for AIDS related charities. I was feeling very weak but was debating whether or not I should do the walk in my friend's memory. The very first time I got into my car after my return, I switched on the radio and the first thing that came over was the words "in memoriam". Needless to say, My mind had been made up for me; I did the walk.

wedding day

My father married, in 1945, a Miss Brown. In 1974 I married a Miss Brown In 2011 my son married a Miss Brown I know that Brown is a very common name, but I think this is worthy of being recorded on your website.

radio frequency?

Some years ago, when my mother was critically ill in hospital, I was staying in her flat, on my own, so that I was able to visit her more frequently. For most of the time I confined myself to my room, kitchen and bathroom, not using her sitting room at all. One morning I had a compelling urge to listen to some music so went into the living room and switched on the radio, never having done this before. The first thing I heard was a voice I recognised: It was my brother being interviewed! I had had no prior knowledge whatsoever of this interview.

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