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!

Movies and Coach

A. The Wizard of Oz (1939) 1. Hickory, North Carolina, is my hometown. I graduated from Hickory High School in Hickory, North Carolina. The mascot for this high school is the “Red Tornadoes.” I am not sure what year this high school adopted this mascot though the Wikipedia page for this high school does state that the high school in Hickory, North Carolina, was renamed “Hickory High School” in the 1940s. In the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, a tornado sweeps the character Dorothy Gale and her dog, Toto, away from Kansas, and “Hickory” is the name of another character in that movie. 2. One of my father’s first cousins once lived in or around Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A news article in the Hickory Daily Record (Ragan Robinson, “Where’s the Granite Falls? What’s the Long View?,” at www.hickoryrecord.com (July 18, 2010)) suggests that Hickory, North Carolina, possibly got its name from settlors who moved to the area from Hickory, Pennsylvania, in or around where Lancaster, Pennsylvania, today is located. Again, “Hickory” is the name of a character in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. 3.

My moms death and anniversary

My mom passed away April 2, 2017 from a brain aneurism. The previous day I was at her house picking up my son. I dropped him off with my husband then went to work a graveyard shift at a coffee shop. The regular coffee drinkers were telling me about the guy that bought my old house which my mom gave to me but my husband and I returned to her so she could sell it. They told me he hanged himself in the backyard. I thought they were playing an April fools joke on me but they kept saying nope it’s not the first anymore. I got chills and was creeped out. I left work at 5am. I drove by my moms house on the way home. I thought about stopping to tell her about the guy at the house because I knew she would have some thoughts on it. Then I thought nah I don’t want to wake her up. When I got in front of her house I noticed her bedroom light was on. Then I realized the flashing meant it was the tv. I thought she must have fallen asleep with the tv on. And I went home. My husband went to work at 6am. The kids were awake so I turned on cartoons and dozed off on the couch. For some reason my husband had a police scanner he just randomly would listen to. It was turned on and right near my head.

This is a double coincidence almost...its weird.

My name is Tully. Very weird name, I know. There was a movie that came out in 2018 called Tully and it instantly piqued my interest because I am literally the only person I know with such a name. I then looked into the movie, trying to find out why it had the same name as me and then discovered that the actress who played Tully, Mackenzie Davis, was born on my birthday. I was born on April Fool's, so not exactly one of the common ones and to this day it just boggles my mind.

The Appalachian Trail

As Ralph was leaving for some researches in the Harvard Library, his psychic girlfriend Betty told him that something important would happen at 2:00PM. Indeed he stumbled walking down a stairway at that time, and Susan, who was walking up, came over to help him pick up his papers and books. Grateful for this help from a stranger, Ralph suggested they go for coffee. In the middle of their conversation Ralph reached over, took Susan's hand, and said "Will you marry me?" One day after several months of happy marriage they exchanged tales of memorable events from the years before they met. Ralph told of his months walking the Appalachian trail southward, and recalled a girl walking northward carrying a large bedpost on her back. Susan had also walked the trail, northward, and recalled seeing a strange young fellow dancing naked along the trail and singing native incantations. Yes, the "bedpost" was a Japanese musical instrument: Ralph and Susan had met so very briefly five years before on the Appalachian Trail.

My friend's son in Thailand

I talked to a friend of mine in Maryland and told her that I was going to Thailand on a trip. I told her that I owned a condo there and would be staying for several weeks. She said "Oh, that's great! My son is in Thailand now. He lives in Chiang Mai." First coincidence....that's where I was going! She asked me if I would take some things to him and call him when I arrived, which I agreed to, of course. I called him on his cell phone and met him outside my condo building to give him the package from his mother. SECOND coincidence.....He lived in the same condo building as me! What are the odds of that???

My friend's son in Thailand

I talked to a friend of mine in Maryland and told her that I was going to Thailand on a trip. I told her that I owned a condo there and would be staying for several weeks. She said "Oh, that's great! My son is in Thailand now. He lives in Chiang Mai."<br /> First coincidence....that's where I was going! </p> <p>She asked me if I would take some things to him and call him when I arrived, which I agreed to, of course.<br /> I called him on his cell phone and met him outside my condo building to give him the package from his mother.<br /> SECOND coincidence.....He lived in the same condo building as me!!<br /> What are the odds of that???

Strange dream and feeling before discovering the death of my ex-wife..

One morning I woke up with a strange feeling about an ex-wife that I had not seen or talked to in over 25 years. I had also heard almost nothing of her from friends, except that she had remarried. We had a short and not too loving of a marriage..... I had a short dream about her one night, that I discussed with my wife when I awoke. I dreamed that I had seen her in public. She looked young, slim, fit and healthy in my dream (even though her chronological age should have been almost 60), and she was smiling at me. I asked her how she was doing and she said that she was "very happy now." When I awoke, I had a feeling of dread that maybe something had happened to her. I Googled her name, and there it was.....her obituary. She had died recently of Lymphoma.

a strange coincidence about a cat........

This story actually encompasses two coincidences. After I met my wife, we began to discuss family stories and I showed her some photos from my college days, including one of me in my cap and gown standing in front of the townhouse that I lived in while in school. My wife immediately recognized the townhouse development. She said "that's English Village in Memphis. My mother used to live there." Turns out that her mother and I lived back to back in that development at the same exact time for years and that my future wife had visited there many times! When I was asking my mother-in-law later about when she lived there and if she ever remembered seeing me, she had to deny ever remembering seeing me or talking to me.

family coincidence discovered after meeting my wife

When I met my wife (that's another story all together about how that happened!), we fell for one another immediately. It was like lightning bolts had struck us both. I couldn't wait to get to know her and asked her out immediately. We went to dinner the day we met and started talking about family. I was living in Maryland at the time (that is where we met) and she was working for a company in Arkansas. She was passing through my area on sales calls. When we started discussing our personal stories at dinner, she asked me where my parents were living. I told her that they lived in a small rural farm town in southern Illinois that she had probably never heard of. That town was Mount Vernon, Illinois.....where my future wife grew up and went to High School. Her parents were currently still living there (as were mine), and my parents and grandparents had lived in that same small town for many years. Generations of both of our families were intertwined in that rural community. I knew the town very well from so many visits there in the past.

eerie coincidence in meeting my wife.......

One day over 25 years ago at lunch meeting while speaking with my office manager, she asked me what sort of woman I pictured when I thought about what my "perfect wife" would look like. I was single at the time and hadn't dated for a long time after a disastrous previous marriage. I described a very specific person with blue eyes, and a light, freckly complexion and long strawberry blonde hair. Also, a beautiful smile. I also described her as petite, maybe a size 2, slim, and intelligent, with a college degree or higher, and maybe someone who worked in the same field that I was in or something similar.

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