Cambridge Coincidences Collection

Well I Never!

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

Time to wake up!

For almost a decade, I used to wake up every other day or so exactly at 6:32 in the morning (checked in the digital o'clock nearby). Maybe there is a physiological (extreme regularity, which knowing myself I hardly believe) or psychological factor (like remembering only the favorable events) going on here, but it was a very weird period for me. Now it is gone.

A unexpected Sighting

I live in the Midwest. During the month of May, my son and I visited my Cousin and her family for a Month in the Orlando area. We spent a day at Disney World. I was certain that I saw my Endocrinologist walk right past me. How could that be? She lives 1,200 miles away! 5 days after my return, I had an appointment. Yes, it was her. She and her family were at Disney World that day. Very weird!

My son's birthday

I went into labor on July 22, 2002. My son was born 29 hours later on July 23 at 1254 PM. The same birthdate as his deceased Paternal Grandfather. It was certainly an extra special day for his father's family!

Cousins

When I was living in Lilongwe I had a carpool with a certain person. When I moved to Oxford this person's cousin was in my tutor group.

The Planet Vulcan

I went through about a year period of time where I was posting in a local internet forum and I would randomly bring up a topic or a theory I had or anything really, and within a week or two, sometimes days, something directly related to it would happen in the real world. This could be in the form of an article on a mainstream newsite coming out related to it, which most of the time I would find by accident. One of the single craziest ones was while I was doing some reading about ancient gods, I came across the Roman god Vulcan (2018-09-15 ), who I had never heard of.

Place I live

My parents lived in Australia 1968-71 and my eldest brother was born there, they then returned to England and settled in Derby in a suburb named Chaddesden where I was born. Several years after moving there my mother was looking through photos of Australia and found a picture of my brother standing next to the mail boxes of the block of flats they lived in (204 The Avenue, Parkville, Melbourne, Victoria) in the background was the entrance to the block of flats and the name above the door was Chaddesden. My parents had never realised and only called it by the number and road name.

Headphones

I have so many however this one happened recently. I bought a Crown headphone and the woman who owns the company ran off with my money. I was devastated. 2 wks later a man emailed me, not related or knows of the other Crown headphone company, and said he wants to make me a new best one crown headphone set of my choice. I Sussex him out, found him legit, he made me the headphones of my choice and sent it to me. He had NO idea of my previous trauma with another crown headphone company.

Three grandfathers in my family share a death date in different years

My paternal grandfather died on November 21, 2005. My maternal grandfather died one year later on November 21, 2006. As the only child of my father, I am the only one to share these two grandfathers. This year, my first cousins (my mother's sister's daughters) now have this in common with me. Their father's father died on November 21, 2019. Also, my maternal grandfather was born on 12-12-21 and his great grandson (son of one of my cousins mentioned above who just lost their other grandfather) was born on 12-21-12.

Meeting on a train journey

Paddington Station the evening commute - the train to Penzance was delayed by 2 hours due to a fatality. Suddenly, we had the go ahead to get on a train the line was now open. There were hundreds of people on the concourse and it was a race to get a seat on the train. I travel second class but when there is a delay and hundreds of people boarding the train with no prospect of a seat I just plonk myself down in first class, as I did this evening. In the four seats facing each other there was me (a woman) and three men.

DIY Tool

A couple of weeks ago I started doing some DIY - building some walls using plaster board fixed to a metal framework. I'd been told that I needed to get a special tool to crimp the sections of metal frame together so I looked on the internet for it. I live in France so was searching in French but didn't know the correct name of the tool and had a stab at various word combinations and eventually came up with pince à expansion; From the picture of the tool it was clear that it wasn't the one I needed although it said it was for plaster board.

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