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!

People I Have Worked With

I worked with someone for 10 years and discovered a number of curious similarities. Our mothers share the same name - Sylvia. His father was an amputee, as was mine. His birthday was the same as my husband. We had just one child each, both girls with names beginning with 'C'. Finally, we were both working/living in New York during 1976 although we never met while there. Also, while in New York in 1976, and in the course of my work, I had contact with a travel agent who, noting my accent, mentioned he had a relative who was currently living in the UK - in Surrey did I know it? Yes I said, I'm from Surrey but it's a big place. Well he said, my relative lives in a place called Sanderstead. I was born in Sanderstead I replied. It turned out this relative of his lived in the same road I was born in.

Obscure words

Roughly 20 years ago I was sent for work to visit a house in a small village about an hour from where I lived. I had never previously been to the village and the address I was given was fairly nondescript, something like 12, Church Street but no house name was given. On the way down I was thinking of a friend of mine from school days [20 years previously] and his brother, who I knew a little. The brother had recently married a girl who was studying shoe design in London at Cordwainers College, part of the London school of fashion. I thought about what a wonderful word cordwainer was, the almost extinct term for a shoemaker. Upon arriving at the house I walked to to front door and saw a small sign with the name of the house, Cordwainers Cottage.

Birdwatching

Coincidence No. 2. In the 1970s I was a keen birder, and would regularly meet with a friend at a National Nature Reserve at Stodmarsh in Kent - some 100km from our homes. I lost touch with him and didn't visit Stodmarsh for approximately 15 years. When at a conference nearby in 1994, I decided to visit the place again. I parked in the carpark in which another man had just parked. It was of course my friend of 15 years previously, visiting the reserve for the first time since our last meeting there.

Glastonbury savings!

In 1982 I travelled to the Glastonbury Festival, arriving very late on Thursday night after a car breakdown. With friends I wandered around the pyramid stage area, helped a very ill young man to the medical centre, and was on my way back to our campsite when I saw something on the ground. I picked it up and found a roll of banknotes tied with an elastic band. I pocketed it, intending to hand it in the next morning. In the morning I located another group of friends from my former home town, including my best friend from school. He looked very unhappy, and on asking him why he said that he had lost the money that he had saved up (£100 - a large sum in those days!) on the previous evening. I asked him how much and what it looked like. He described the roll of bank notes tied with an elastic band, which I then produced from my pocket and handed over to him. Yes, it's unlikely, but not beyond possibility!

If I see your son I will say hello

September 1979 - My father ran Broadwaters sub post office in Kidderminster when a customer came in and ordered some US American travellers cheques for his holiday in a week or so. My father asked him where he was going and he said the West Coast US. Meanwhile I had been working in the US (east coast) for a year and that was coming to an end. I embarked on a two month tour where I intended to visit some 35 states on a circle tour by bus and hire car. My father told the customer that I had started a tour around the states. The customer said if I meet him I will say hello. My dad said he had no idea where I was until we get postcards from the different places that I had visited. So eventually I reached San Francisco and wanted to visit Alcatraz it was September and the ferry service was very busy and I had not booked, I was told to come back at 14:00 for the last ferry and see if there were any spaces available. I did get a ticket but the ferry was full so I made my way to the upper deck to find a seat. When I sat down I was amazed to hear a familiar black country accent coming from an elderly couple with their backs to me.

Strange connections...

Hi, the first thing I was thinking about when it comes to coincidence is this story, enjoy! When I was 16/17 yrs old I went on holiday with my family, we went on a mule-trekking hol. to a small town in the mountains of Spain (sorry, I can't remember the name). One night I went to the local bar, there I met two other English girls a bit older than me. We got talking and I found out that they had gone to the same primary school as my new boyfriend; now for the coincidence/s...my boyfriend had grown up in another city (Peterborough) and was now in london, but even stranger, the school the girls had been at was an all-girls school...my boyfriend had spent ( a brief) time going to this school because one of his parents had been working there! I think it was potentially unusual to meet these girls, as the small town wasn't at all a tourist destination, the mule-trekking was about it...

The case of the black panther banana charger

Another couple of online v TV connections today. I was discussing a passage in the bible which reads 'you will know them by their fruits' which was referring to an image featuring coincidental peaches which looked like human genitals. I had also posted an article from the paper about the movie 'Black Panther' I had cause to particular mention the fruit 'banana' to my friend with respect to the fruit image. As I turned over the page of the paper,it referred to the 'top personal chargers' for personal gadgets. My friend then proceeded to tell me he had been eating a banana,and had dropped his charger in his coffee! At the same time the TV programme "New Tricks" which had already mentioned 'cherry picking' and 'forming patterns' as well as a sideways reference to the female reproduction organ,then went on to mention 'The black panther' murder,as opposed to the superhero I had just posted online.

Meeting people in far flung places - it really is a small world!

In 1974 I was visiting some friends in Denmark. I was talking to them about my boyfriend back in Scotland. They said they knew someone with his surname - Peden, an unusual name even in Scotland. They started talking about Steffi and Heidi Peden. My boyfriend had an uncle Alex and an aunt Heidi. It turned out they were the same people. Heidi was German in origin and so was the mother of the guy I was visiting in Denmark. It turned out that his mother and Heidi's mother had been best of friends and actually he had known Heidi's mother as 'Tante Mems. In 1981 I went to work in Lesotho in southern Africa. I was sitting in the airport at Johannesburg airport next to a Scottish guy. He asked me where I came from and I told him. He came from the same place and although he was younger than me and I didn't really know him he knew my younger sister. A couple of years ago I went on holiday to Turkey. Among the group were 2 ladies from Scotland. We got talking and they found out I was a psychiatrist and had trained in Glasgow. I was telling them about where I'd worked and about some of the characters I'd worked with.

Unlikely chain of events with Sheila Hancock novel

In May 2015 I was reading the Daily Telegraph, sitting on a bench in the street. I was intrigued by an article about the actress Sheila Hancock and her novel, "Miss Carter's War". I finished the article and a few minutes later, to kill time, I casually wandered into a nearby charity shop with a book case of novels for sale. Without thinking, and without reading the titles, I went straight up and reached for a book. It was the very one I had been reading about. It was the first and only book I picked up. I was so surprised I had to buy it.

Margaret Munyard

This series of coincidences involving me and members of my family and a seemingly unconnected other family. They began in 1987 when a mutual friend asked if I could offer my spare room to a new work colleague for a few weeks. (I shall call her K). K was relocating from London to the north of England but the conveyancing on the house she was buying was delayed and her start date at work began before she had a home. I said yes and on the agreed day K duly arrived at my house apologising for her late arrival as she'd had to drop off a friend in Nottingham en route from London. As I'd lived for several years in Nottingham I pursued the conversation and we discovered that the man she gave a lift to was someone I knew from work and as such shared some social times with over a period of 5 or 6 years. Not only that but we worked out that when K had come to Nottingham for a weekend to see her friend, we'd probably been in the same pub in the same group of friends/work colleagues although we didn't remember actually meeting each other. But we discovered that we knew many of the same people. It goes on.

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