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!

Twin reunion

My late husband, who is an identical twin, had done his national service in Iraq and on his demob day eventually travelled home via Waterloo station. His brother had been stationed in the UK. On arriving at Cheam station he got into the first available taxi to be greeted with the comment 'eh gov, I just took you and an elderly gentleman to that address!' Sure enough when he arrived at the familial home his twin brother had just arrived back in that same taxi.

Same school.

I visited Uzbekistan on a solo holiday as somewhere I had wanted to visit for many years. The group of 26 met up at Heathrow and we were told we were waiting for a woman to join us from a South African flight. As the only flights to Uzbekistan are twice a week from Heathrow, plus a few from Madrid and Rome, and within Asia, this was understandable. We flew to Tashkent where we stayed for one night before taking an internal flight to Urgench then to travel on by coach to Khiva. We were all solo travellers so got talking. In the three seats behind was the woman from South Africa. My row of three got up to visit the loo, and the row behind us joined the queue. The South African asked me did she overhear me say I lived in Hereford and I confirmed this; she then said she'd been to school in Abergavenny (26 miles down the road). I replied that so had I - we had gone to the same grammar school at the same time, she was three years ahead of me. We spent the rest of the flight reminiscing about our teachers; and continued with other reminiscences throughout the holiday.

Family Reunion

My expat father lost contact with his wife and young daughter after their marriage ended in East Africa in the 1950s. He returned to England and married my mother. As his second family, we emigrated to Perth, Australia, in 1968. My father in those days kept his first family secret, except from my mother. In the mid-1980s, one evening my mother went to her ladies' public speaking club, visiting a sister club in the hills near Perth. She listened with increasing shock and disbelief to a talk by a lady about her younger days, as the circumstances exactly matched what she knew of my father's first marriage. It was indeed the same woman. With her second husband she had returned to Scotland, and thence they had emigrated to Perth too. The daughter had remained in Scotland. Father and daughter were soon happily reunited and in 1986 I travelled from Perth (WA) to Scotland to meet the half-sister I'd never have known but for this coincidence. (I've since settled back in the UK).

1914

Several years ago I was walking my dog along a road where we regularly walked. The road has existed for hundreds of years, leading to fields surrounding the village, and is now covered in Tarmac. There is no footpath, so pedestrians walk in the roadway. As I walked I was listening to an audiobook by John Keegan about the 1914-1918 war. I was about halfway through the fist chapter dealing with the events leading up to the outbreak of war in 1914 when I noticed something sticking out from the road surface. I extracted it from the tar and found that it was an old one penny coin. I was startled to see that the year on the coin was 1914. The coin was in very good condition, showing almost no wear and must have been dropped in the roadway shorly after minting. However the road has been resurfaced and repaired many times since 1914. I am not a superstitious person but I confess to feeling that the coin had been waiting for me.

The Plume connection

I grew up in Putney in south London and my teenage sweetheart for 6 of my teen years was David who lived in Chiswick. When I went off to college in 1958 the relationship gradually foundered and David began a relationship with June, a librarian from the local public library. We lost touch but I learned from friends that David and June married in 1961. I met and married Ken and we had 4 children. We moved to Hampshire when we married and have lived here for most of our married life. Our eldest son recently married a lovely girl called Georgina. They are both teachers in London and met at a teaching conference. They now live in Balham but Georgina grew up in Greenwich in a pub called "The Plume of Feathers" owned by her mother Fast forward to 2010. I was going to be 70 in that year and for some inexplicable reason I thought of David who I hadn't spoken to for 50 years and remembered that he was going to be 70 too. I had no idea where he lived or even if he was still alive. I did a little simple research on the net and came up with a possible person living in Kent.

American meetings

The following all happened on my first research gthering visit to North America in 1968. 1. The first person I saw on clearing immigration was someone with whom I had shared an office in the UK for four years, but with whom I had had no further contact. 2. On the Statten Island ferry a young American lady standing next to me askeed if I knew the name of an island we were passing. On hearing my Scottish accent she asked where I came from. I replied "Aberdeen" and she introduced me to her neighbour who was visiting form Aberdeen. This neighbour lived in Sunnyside Road, where my mother had been born and where a first cousin on my father's side lived. She knew my cousin had had helped him run a youth club. The neighbour said she worked in the Rowett Institute, and it transpired that she shared an office with my first cousin on my mother's side. 3. In 1957 I had had a joint 21st birthday party with four friends in Edinburgh. Three of these were now in North America, and I had arranged to visit them all. I had lost touch with the fourth, but met her by chance on Connecticut Avenue in Washington DC. 4.

Passport mix up

I was travelling by bus in East Africa many years ago and were passing through the chaos of passport control at the border between Kenya and Tanzania. I chatted to an English nurse in the queue to pass the time and when we finally were allowed through we grabbed our passports and got back on the bus. I glanced quickly at my passport and found the photo of a girl; I checked with the nurse and found she had got mine. We realised the reason for the confusion when we noticed our respective passports had been issued at the same office and at the same time - the 9 figure numbers were sequential differing only by the last digit.

Birth Day Celebration

Although my brother and sisters and I were all born on different days of the week: MONDAY 25 June 1950 TUESDAY 29 October 1946 FRIDAY 4 June 1948 SUNDAY 9 JULY 1950 we celebrate our birthdays each year on the same day of the week. So this year, for example, our birthdays all fall on a Monday!

Crossed paths

I am an Australian who has been in the UK for forty years, now living in a village you have probably never heard of called Staplehurst. Recently I was in my mother's birthplace, Hobart, Tasmania, attending my cousin's wedding. I asked my cousin about someone at another table, whom I thought I recognized, but I was wrong. My cousin then offered to introduce us anyway, since the woman's husband had migrated from Kent many years before. "And where in Kent do you come from?" I asked him. "You won't have heard of it," he replied; "it's a little village called Staplehurst." I told him that is where I live. "My father ran a pub," he said. "I grew up in The Bell. Do you know it?" "Yes," I said. "I had a drink there last week." Bill

similar life pathway

I was borne and educated in County Durham until entering Medical School in Birmingham in 1953. I have lived in B'ham ever since but have a holiday home in Devon and joined Thurlestone Golf Club there some 6 years ago. After playing there 2 years ago and relaxing in the bar, I heard a familiar accent and introduced myself to the ''owner'' of it. Co. Durham? Yes Where? Oh, you wouldn't know it. Where? Dipton Not only did I know Dipton but I lived within 2 miles of him (John B). We both went to the same Grammar School in West Stanley (though not at the same time), both went on to Birmingham University and both married nurses from the same Birmingham hospital. And we are now both members of the same Golf Club and own properties within 5 miles of each other. Geoff H.

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