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!

A surfeit of fours

In 2005 we were living and working in London but travelling back here to France very frequently. To make the journey easier, we bought a small new car which would be left at the airport in Toulouse when we returned to London. We picked up our new car from the garage and drove around a bit for a couple of days before we had to head back to London. Very early on the Monday morning we got into the car and left to drive to Toulouse airport to catch the early morning flight to Gatwick. About two thirds of the way along the motorway I idly glanced at the instrument panel. The time was 4.44 am, coincidentially at the same moment the speedo was showing 444 kilometres. It all began to feel a bit spooky when we realised that the date was Monday 4th April. Unfortunately, we were a year too late as it was 2005. However, I think 444 kilometres at 4.44am on the 4th day of the 4th month wasn’t bad going as a coincidence, unless the real coincidence was that I chanced to look up at the right moment.

A loaf of bread

We were living on a boat in Singapore. We had been cruising in the Far East for five years. Fed up with pirates and immigration we decided to return to Europe? But where? Not cold-clouded England after our years in the tropics. I went shopping and bought a stick of bread. It had a scrap of torn newspaper wrapped around it to hold it by. Back on board, I looked at the paper. It was an advertisement for an Estate Agency in Andorra in the Pyrenees, advertising an exhibition and sales promotion in a Singapore hotel. I went and collected brochures. Andorra did not require a visa – no problems with Immigration! We sailed back to the Spanish Mediterranean and I have been an Andorran citizen for the past ten years. Serendipity, but only because I went to the presentation.

Serendipity

I had been lying in the lock-up ward of a large psychiatric hospital for some five months suffering from severe depression. One day I roused myself enough to think, "What are you doing lying there? Do you think angels are going to come and scoop you up in their wings and carry you over the high walls to freedom? If you want to get out of here you better do something about it yourself." I sat up. There on the ward floor was a discarded copy of the Sunday Express. I picked it up and flipped through it. My eye was caught by an article about a man sailing single-handed around the world. I read on. Asked if he ever got lonely he replied "No, but the ideal would be to find a girl with the same idea to come along too." I wrote to him. We met. Three months later we set out together to drive to Singapore, an adventure of a lifetime that turned into a lifetime of adventure. My husband, Edward Allcard, died last year aged 102, 49 years and a day since we left England in a Land Rover, he aged 53 and me aged 22.

Ypres Remembrance Day

A group of us from Andorra had been invited by the Anglican vicar of St Georges, Ypres to attend the November 11th Memorial service. On the day, we were told to follow him closely in the Remembrance parade. This was made easy by his flowing, poppy-red robes. As we approached the Menin Gate I saw no way we could get through the crowds. I decided to peal off to the left and try my luck there. Eventually I was brought to a standstill beside a suited, straight-backed gentleman with a tightly rolled umbrella. I glanced at him. He was wearing my father's Regimental tie. I said "Excuse me. Were you in the Parachute Regiment?" He looked at me rather coldly. "Yes." I'd forgotten, we hadn't actually been introduced. "Were you at Arnhem?" He unbent a little. "Yes." and gave a slight smile. "Did you know my father, Sheriff Thompson?" "Know him? He was my commanding officer! A wonderful man!" And he went on to wax lyrical about him. The crowd at the Gate that day was many thousand strong. Serendipity. But without action, my talking to him, nothing would have happened.

Colombo airport

Our flight to Nepal had been delayed by two hours. There was a Caucasian man standing around looking as bored as I felt. Maybe he spoke English. He did. He asked me what I was doing in Sri Lanka. "Living on a boat," I replied. "That's interesting. One of my employees in New Zealand has just sailed around the world on a boat." "What's his name?" "Terry Banks" "Rally! His children are my guardian children." It was Christmas time so I bought them presents from a souvenir shop and the man promised to deliver them when he got home. Serendipity. But serendipity doesn't work without action. If I hadn't spoken to him this would not have occurred. (I will be posting several more stories.)

Similar unusual phrase from two sources

I was watching a music education video on Youtube when the phrase "this is music theory; not music fact" appeared on the screen. At that precise time, I received a message notification from a friend living and working over 2000km away stating "these aren't some theory, these are facts".

Harrow Weald

3 big Coincidences [1] when I started work at a stable in Harrow Weald in 1963, 5 miles from my home there was a person, male my age, name Nick . And when I went to visit my cousin in Hatchend [ 5 miles from my home ] I met her husband to be and he was the brother of the same Nick . We had met brothers coincidentally. We married IE cousins married brothers all by coincidence . [2] also at the stables there was a girl Anne who had been at school with me age 5 . we had had no contact in between . [3] My Brother married Rita from Ealing, 10 miles away in 1964 , she told me of her best friend Carolyn she had lost touch with . In 1993 My husbands cousin Tony from Harrow, had a girl friend called Carolyn and eventually we chatted and found out that she had been Rita's friend and now she is my best friend . The mileage between these locations don't sound a lot but in London suburbs we have a great density of population .

Name coincidence

My mother, who was called Primrose Broomhead, died recently. For her funeral I decided I would wear a black dress but because she loved flowers and her name was Primrose I thought I would like to wear a scarf with primroses on it. I googled scarf and primroses and then looked at the links. One of them seemed to fit the bill and I looked on the website of the person who was selling the scarf. When I looked at the contact details imagine the shock I had when my maiden name jumped out at me, Valerie Broomhead. Not only was the scarf being made by a person with my birth name but it also had pansies on it which was one of my father's favourite plants. I shook with emotion as I purchased the scarf. You can google 'Valerie Broomhead - scarves' to see if this was true. In all my life (70 years) I have never met anyone with a name the same as my maiden name and why did it happen just after my mother died?

Family connection

In 1973 I travelled with my parents to Waldau in the Black Forest to try to find information about the Fehrenbach family from whom my father descended. We found living, my father's 3rd cousin Eduard Spiegelhalter & his wife Berta, who helped us draw up a rough family tree, & told us that the family business in London had been at 81, Mile End Road, East London. Some months later I decided to start collecting old postcards, & went to a huge postcard fair. There were hundreds of dealers & millions of cards, & I chose just one, for the picture. The following weekend I visited my parents & showed the card to my father , who turned it over to look at the stamp, & said "did you notice the address"? It was addressed to Miss L. Spiegelhalter, 81 Mile End Road! The odds of this happening must be millions to one

Strange route to an old acquaintance

This all happened on the same day, 29th November, 2017. </p> <p> I saw, by chance, a reference to a long, long defunct American magazine called 80-US. I remembered being an avid reader, and also having had an article published in it, so I searched on it and found that it was not only well referenced on the web, but some copies were downloadable in a multitude of formats and they included the edition with my article in it. It was the February, 1983 edition. </p> <p>Later that morning a friend called me and I told him about it. It was soon after the death of Rodney Bewes, and my friend commented that he expected that I, like Bewes, wanted some repeat fees for web publication. No such thought had entered my mind, but a memory came back to me of a chap I worked with in the late 1960s who was an aspiring actor and had landed a part in the BBC production of 'The Forsyte Saga.' He was delighted at the fee he got for the work, but even more delighted when he started getting repeat fees—it was shown in pretty nearly every country in the world that had television.

Pages