Cambridge Coincidences Collection

Well I Never!

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

Dad and 13

My late father, the opera singer Gordon Parfitt, was the 13th child of a Welsh mining family born on April 13th 1913. sadly he died the year I was born in 1953 aged 40, but the number and its multiples has always been seen as significant to us,
Total votes: 365
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:57:23 +0000Coincidence ID:3586

School friends and Ealing

At school in Sussex there were 5 girls and 8 boys in the sixth form. After school I came to live in Ealing - I discovered the house I moved to was a few doors from that of Mary's grandmother and aunt. And that both Peters had been born in Ealing, one in a house opposite my friend's. Lesley and one Peter moved independently and live close by each other in Shropshire. Subsequently Pat moved to Oxford near to my son. And Gill's brother Rob now runs a choir in Rome, in which my Ealing friend Helen sings. Furthermore two others from school moved to Ealing, having married people from here, one living around the corner from me for many years, the other close by. That's just for a start - there must be something about Ealing. I have two friends here whom I met independently - turns out they worked in the same office in Paris. And a lady who just joined our exercise class worked at the consulate in Florence - with a sister of one of them. And when I lost touch with an old school friend at age 13, she contacted my mother in Sussex when she returned to England from having lived in Switzerland - and we were living 5 minutes away from each other in Ealing. And so on..............
Total votes: 399
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:57:06 +0000Coincidence ID:3584

Bike Story

I live in Chorlton, Manchester. I popped into a local newsagent to get a paper one day, parking my cycle outside the shop, neglecting to lock it up as it was only a 30 second trip. On returning the bike had gone. I looked around then borrowed a friend's bike for a better search, to no avail. I went home and called the police to report the theft. They wanted the frame number, which I hadn't recorded, so I rang the bike shop where the bike was purchased, 4 miles away in Rusholme, to see if they had the detail. The guy in the shop went upstairs to check in the office filing cabinet, glanced out of the window and saw a few lads on the estate across the road with a bike he though was my Trek - he had sold it to me a few month's earlier and it was a new model, so quite rare. On investigating he identified it as it had the shop's sticker on the frame. He challenged the lads and knew their story of just having bought it was a lie. They panicked and he retrieved it. I got it back to my astonishment, and his! The panniers and contents had gone, but the bike was intact. How unlikely is that?
Total votes: 449
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:56:57 +0000Coincidence ID:3583

Newspaper account

Our newspaper shop uses a computer to calculate our accounts for papers delivered daily to customers. For while, because of rising prices, my account number, 956, was the same as the amount I paid, £9.56.
Total votes: 407
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:55:46 +0000Coincidence ID:3582

Identical Phone Number When Moving House From UK to Australia

When we moved house from Worthing to Brisbane the new domestic phone number we were given had exactly the same last five digits (in the same sequence) as our previous phone number in the UK. As you know, numbers in the UK have also have a five digit area code. From memory, numbers in Australia at the time were eight digits long.
Total votes: 347
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:55:23 +0000Coincidence ID:3581

See Twig

I was walking the kids to school one wet morning. We passed under a big thick hazel hedge, trying to avoid getting wet. I put the kids on the outside of the pavement and took the inner position myself. A twig poked behind my glasses. As I turned my eyes to avoid it I saw the name on a passing van: C. Twigg. This is the oddest coincidence I have experienced but there have been so many, it almost seems normal. My husband and I have rung each other at exactly the same time so many times, I wonder why we needed a phone. Anne
Total votes: 447
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:54:55 +0000Coincidence ID:3580

Radio coincidence

In 2003 Classic FM played two pieces that I had voted for in an evening programme. I had voted for these pieces in the station's annual 'Hall of Fame' vote. On the same programme two pieces were played chosen by someone else who I'd never heard of. My parents leter told me that they knew the parents of the other person.
Total votes: 412
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:54:38 +0000Coincidence ID:3579

Cambridge CoIncidence

I had posted my story about the Cardiff wrong number, and then decided to look at other posted accounts. The account posted just prior to mine was similar in that it was a chance 'phone encounter'.
Total votes: 437
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:54:05 +0000Coincidence ID:3578

Wedding coincidence

My parents married in 1956 a month after Dad finished his national service and their best man Brian was a chap who my father had done national service with. After a few years Brian moved away with his job and they lost touch and didn't see each other for 15 or 20 years. One day there was a knock on my parents door and it was Brian - he had had to visit my parents home town for a work meeting and had looked them up and called in on the offchance. As they were sitting in the lounge drinking tea and catching up, my Mum told Brian 'my daughter is married now' and pointed to the wedding photo on the wall. Brian said 'I know that man' - turns out that Brian was my husband's boss at work.
Total votes: 407
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:53:58 +0000Coincidence ID:3577

Working abroad

I was working in Oman and taking a leisurely day on the deserted beautiful beach. I went swimming. There was only one other person in the water. We started talking and it turned out that he had been brought up in the same small Essex seaside village where my mother lives and his parents ran her local fish and chip shop.
Total votes: 675
Date submitted:Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:53:43 +0000Coincidence ID:3576

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