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!

-places dedicated to st michael

1) Skellig Michael, (off the coast of Kerry) St Michaels mount (in Cornwall) and mont St Michel (in Brittany) are geographically in a straight line. 2) some years back, we visited Skellig Michael and found out on return that friends had visited St Michaels Mount on the same day at the same time. Furthermore other friends had been on mont St Michel at the same time on the same date. All prople involved lived in the same village

telephone oddity

for over 30 years i have had the following phone number (std not shown) ***** 854282 Seven years ago i purchased my first mobile phone which had the number ***** 582428 ie all the same 6 digits with the 3 `pairs` in reverse order.

valentine`s day surprise

my partner and i were playing in bands a few years ago. we were each on tour; i was in eire and he in holland. he had played the same place, in ennis, weeks before me so hatched a surprise with the pub landlady. when the band and i turned up a big bouquet arrived, and i was thrilled. after soundcheck we drove up the road to our b and b so we could drop off bags etc. as i came down to the foyer, they said` there`s a phonecall for you`. i was amazed and happy to hear my partner, and chatted away, then we realised how wierd this was. he`d phoned the number he thought to be that of the music venue, had been trying for ages in a dutch call-box (no mobiles in those days!) but got through to the wrong number, just as i was there at the guest house instead!

Ongoing coincidences.

I lived in Nuneaton and was at the High School from 1951 to 1957. There was a man, obviously waiting for a lift each morning, and we gradually started to say "Good morning". I left school and got a job, for which I had to go on a week's course in Birmingham: opposite me, on the train, was this man, so I greeted him as usual. We got talking - he was a psychologist, giving some lectures that week, so we travelled up and down together . I moved to Essex in 1959, and several months later my mother said that she'd met a man in the local shop who knew me, and that she'd invited him over that evening, because he was lodging at the bungalow immediately opposite ours, and was moving the following day. Some years later, I was telling the story to one of my staff as we were discussing coincidences, and I told her that I never knew his name. "It's Mallobane" she said - he was the father of her boyfriend! We never met again, though I half expected that we would!

London travel coincidence

In August 2004 we travelled to London on our narrowboat. While moored in Little Venice, one day I had to take our younger son to Cambridge by train, while my husband took the older boy sightseeing in London, agreeing we'd all meet back at the boat 'whenever' that evening. Heading back to the mooring at the end of a very hot day, they were slumped on a train on the Bakerloo line at Baker Street when son 2 and I stepped in to the same carriage through the same door and sat down on the two seats opposite them. We were all so weary, we just greeted each other with a casual, 'Hi, how was your day?'. Onlookers in the carriage must have wondered, from our apparent lack of surprise, how we could have engineered to meet like that.

Meeting people

In July 1973 I spent a night in Oban Youth Hostel and during the evening chatted to a few people. I met one of them two months later near Victoria Station in London. We were walking in opposite directions and we recognised each other. In the late 80s I was on holiday in Corfu with a girlfriend and we saw a friend from our town in England. In about 1990 while skiing in a very big resort in the French Alps I met an ex-colleague as he was entering a restaurant and I was leaving. In March 1993, again while skiing in the French Alps I was at a bar in a hotel when a person I recognised but couldn't place came and started chatting to me. It was about five minutes before I realised he was my GP. In about 1995, yet again while skiing in the French Alps (I do one or two weeks a year), I went down to breakfast at a hotel in Chamonix and was hailed by somebody a couple of tables away who recognised me from a skiing holiday one or two years earlier, also in Chamonix and with whom I had skied but not kept in touch. The first time we were in a large tour group but from different parts of the UK. The second time we were both travelling independently.

A liverpudlian curse

As a child we had relations over from Liverpool I lived in Blackpool there was a slight argument and the wife said '' Ihope the bloody Church blows in on you . Actulay there was a wind that day and the window to the church did blow in I was there to see it happen in the Catholic church St Cuthberts in Blackpool

Mrs.

There are two coincidences: the first in New Orleans, USA, 1986, when my husband and I were queuing outside the famous Preservation Hall to listen to the nightly jazz sessions. Behind us were three girls (backpackers) and, as you do, we started talking. One of them asked where we lived in the UK and when we replied, she casually said 'Oh I have a boyfriend from there' - when asked where he lived she answered with the name of our village and followed by giving the name of the road where we live. On giving the name of the family, I was even more surprised as she gave the name of a neighbour and friend of mine and her son whom I had known for many years. Seemed quite a coincidence. The second coincidence was in Sydney, Australia, 1999, My daughter and I were having lunch at the famous Doyles Restaurant, Watsons Bay, when the Manager told us we and one other party had missed the last ferry back to the Harbour. He booked us a ferry taxi and whilst waiting at the Quayside we talked to the other party and, to our surprise, found out they were all from Watford, ony ten minutes from where we lived and, not only that, they knew our village well.

it's a small, small world?

I was flying back to Switzerland from Singapore on the latter's flag carrier some years ago, upgraded to first, wow, couldn't sleep so went aft to have a drink and chat to the cabin girls. Only one other passenger was awake and he joined me for a beer- tall Australian. Got chatting - he was a banker on his way to Geneva. He said he was going on to the UK to see an old retired colleague who always spent three monthsin the UK during summer. I asked "are you going to Surrey?" he replied yes, so I told him the name of his colleague, where he was staying and the name of the guy's wife. First time I've seen an Australian dumbstruck, and all because I used todrink in the same pub as the Old Colleague - is this a coincidence?

Holiday in South Africa

When we were living in S.Africa 20 yrs ago we invited a couple of friends to visit (one single, one married whom I shall call Mary). At the same time another couple of friends (married - Ann & Mike) were touring S.Africa, so we all agreed to meet up for a w/e in the Drakensberg mountains. We introduced our friends to each other by first name only. At the end of the w/e we went our separate ways. We took our 2 friends to Namibia & unfortunately had a road accident in which Mary broke her collar bone. Once back in the UK, I spoke with Ann on the phone & told her about our accident. She asked me for Mary's address so she could write & sympathise. When I told her the surname she remarked that her father (no longer alive) had had a cousin of that name but they had lost touch years ago. And when she heard that Mary's husband John came from Bradford, she reminded me that her father had come from there too. The long & short of it is that I put Ann in touch with Mary & John, and it turned out that John & Ann were 2nd cousins - that John's father (still living) was Ann's father's long-lost cousin!!

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