Cambridge Coincidences Collection

I had been driving past a scrap of land for weeks in the city centre that had been flattened ready for some sort of development. I had always wondered what One day I found myself walking past and saw two isolated workmen - motionless, leaning on their spades. As I walked the remaining 100 yards or so along the path to the point closest to them, I became frustrated by the lack effort going into the project. It bothered me that I didn't know what the land was to be used for or when the building work would be completed and vowed to find out some how. At the exact moment that the thought entered my head one turned to the other and said 'Well Frank, we'd better get a move on if these shops are going to be open for Christmas' around the boundary, , I became I began think again about what the site was to become and when it would open. At that exact moment

My name is Robert Jamieson and I emigrated from Glasgow to the United States in 1957. I enlisted in the United States Air Force and by 1959 I had attained the rank of Airman Second Class. My parents sent me Scottish newspapers and I read in one of them that a Scot from Ayr had emigrated to the United States and had enlisted in the United States Air Force and was then serving at a USAF base in England and had married an English girl. His name was Robert Jamieson and his rank was Airman Second Class. The gist of the story was that he had crossed the Atlantic twice to meet his future wife. I wrote to the newspaper and told them of the coincidence but they did not respond. THIS IS NOT THE END OF THE STORY! At the end of 1969 I received a posting to Labrador but decided to take a leave back in Glasgow. During my leave I met my future wife and after knowing her for only three weeks I went off to Labrador for 14 months. As I was posted in a remote communications site I was able to choose the area of my next assignment and I chose the United Kingdom and was assigned to a USAF base in Essex. By this time I was Airman First Class Robert Jamieson.

I was walking my dogs in my local park in Northampton a few years ago when i got into conversation with a lady who i had seen several times,but never really talked to;she was wearing a Grand Canyon sweatshirt,so i said that as a teenager i had often stayed with my couisin in Arizona,and had been there.We got talking about trips to America,and Una (her name!) asked if i had ever been to New York,to which i replied that i had ,and in fact my mother had been born there.I went on to say that as a baby of 3 months she had come over on the Lusitania with her parents and siblings,and that all barring her 2 sisters,and their swedish nurse had survived.She stopped in her tracks,looked at me and said "My Father in law was at the wheel that day,he also survived!"We had lived within 5 minutes of each other for about 5 years and this was the first time we had contact......it wasn't the last,and i set up a meeting for my mum,Audrey Lawson Johnston,nee Warren Pearl,and the gentleman Jack Johnson.If you need to authenticate their names,they are both mentioned in the excellent Diana Preston book,Wilful Murder,the sinking of the Lusitana,Jack's father was called Hugh,which was al

I took my then girlfriend now wife of 30+ years home to meet my mother. On meeting you could sense that my mother was slightly twitchy about something but she couldn't work out why. She asked Julia, my girlfriend "What's your mothers name" and was told Topsy Woodwark which didn't mean anything to her at all. Then with no prompting and completely out of the blue my mother said "Elizabeth Glendinning" which blew Julia away because those were indeed her mother's christian and maiden names. It transpired that my mother and future mother-in-law had shared a cabin for three weeks at the age of ten on a banana boat as they were evacuated to the West Indies in 1939/40. They never saw each other again as my mother went to live in Trinidad and go to school in Barbados and Topsy went on to school in New York. They grew up completely separately, got married, had children and then their children met at University and got married. Weird or what!