Cambridge Coincidences Collection

Well I Never!

Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University wants to know about your coincidences!

Train of events

In 1975 I was a student at Exeter. My home was a small village in the Swiss Alps. In the autumn I represented Exeter on University Challenge and met the producer Douglas Terry. That Christmas, as I did every holiday, I travelled up to London to take the Orient Express which, on its way to Istanbul would stop at the small town of Aigle, a 20 minute bus ride from my village. As I got into my booked second class seat in London I realised that the man booked in the next seat looked familiar.

Randomly looking up celebrities/politicians that I've never looked up before.

Has this ever happened to anyone else? Happened to look up older celebrities out of the blue, and it just happens to coincidentally be their birthday when I look them up! Today, Feb. 5th, I looked up Valerie Carter because I heard her song while watching a movie to and wanted to find out who sang a song in it. November 22, I looked up JFK, randomly, I was curious how many kids he actually had and were still alive. I randomly chose to look him up on his birthday!?

Internet Surfing

Was reading about the movie "Promised Land" on wikipedia. Moments later, logged onto Facebook and the first story on my timeline was a status from friend saying he wanted to see Promised Land. Such events have happened before, especially when i'm listening to my Ipod on shuffle..and out of a thousand songs, the song I think about is the next song played.

from nowhere

1990, we just arrived in India the night before, stayed in the tourist camp got a rickshaw to kashmiri gate bus station delhi.Stepping into the station was an assault on every fiber of of my body, the mass of people colour smells, noise, every one seemed to be either moving or talking so fast,.

Pigs will fly

31 Jan - After Iran sent a monkey into space,I wrote a letter to the paper remarking "Pigs will fly when animals stop being exploited". I commented to a friend that "If an astronaut had a BLT then perhaps pigs would fly". 1Feb - The paper reported today "It's one small step for ham - pigs may not be able to fly,but a piece of bacon has made it to the edge of space." Company FLY ON THE WALL strapped bacon to a weather balloon as a stunt to show of its hi res cameras and created a bizarre coincidence t'boot.

Neighbors in China

I was on holiday in China with my family one summer when we decided to travel to see a small attraction which was about an hour and a half away from Beijing. On arriving, we get out of our taxi to see our immediate next door neighbours getting off a bus to go look at the same attraction! We didnt know they were going to China too, let alone same place and same time. Moreover, we very rarely see them when at home and have never bumped into them anywhere else before.

Once OK, but twice? in the same day??

My wife and I boarded a train, we were discussing a friend who was having a torrid time with a challenging teenage daughter. The district line train stopped at a station the door opened and my friend and his daughter got on. We chatted to them, they were going to go the the V&A museum, we were going shopping in Covent Garden. We got off the train first. We ambled around the shops and at around lunchtime we found ourselve in the Trocadero centre, no reason why, we never normally do go in there though. We came across our friend and his daughter again.

old friendly

I was walking to bond street tube station via Davis street. Its was about 6 pm on a spring day and light was good. I looked across the street and saw Howard B walking in the opposite direction. So I crossed the street, proffered my right hand and said: " hi Howard its good to see you." I then saw it washis double and more startingly also realised that I had dreamed of this precise event the previous night. My feelings odf being embarrassed were identical in life and dream. I asked myself what the odds might be.

Same Birthday as House Seller

On buying a house in another town and receiving the keys for the house , I suddenly realised that the house had a security alarm. I quickly texted the vendor to ask if they had left the house alarmed and if so what was the code to disable the alarm. They replied that the code was "1203" , I replied that the code is same as the date of my birthday. The vendor texted back "Mine too!"

Old friends

1. My name is Kitty. A few years back, one day out of the blue I thought of my close friend back in uni. On the same day, she emailed me saying she was thinking of me so decided to drop a line to say hello! Places: I was in Sydney and she in Boston USA. Dates: 2008/06 2. I was watching telly. There was this documentary about social fabric and social interaction in the UK, and there were various respondents/interviewees of different gender, age and cultural backgrounds etc.

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