Cambridge Coincidences Collection

Well I Never!

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

Birthday dates

Many of our family have been born on the same dates as the Royal Family. My sister was the first one to be known. She was born in Hull on the 14th. of November, 1948, the same day as Prince Charles. She was sent a silver-plated teaspoon as a gift. The spoon was known in our family as "the Charlie spoon".

How close can you get

My wife and i went on a nile cruise. Standing in the queue to go through customs, we found we were behind a close friend and his wife. They were also going on a nile cruise. It later transpired thar not only were we on the same boat but that their cabin was immediately above ours and we could talk to each other from our balconies.

Mrs Valerie Shaw

Births My step daughter was born on the same date as my grandfather 100 years later and her daughter was born on the same date as my mother 100 years later. I have always thought that remarkable especially as we are not blood related. Telepathy My youngest daughter and I often contact each other just as one of us was thinking of the other. This can be email, text or phone call and it has been like this for years. It happened when we lived close and still continues now that she lives in Australia.

BBC NEWS COINCIDENCE, MUSICAL COINCIDENCE

Dear Professor Spiegelhalter, Sixteen years ago I woke up in my Paris apartment one Sunday morning and immediately thought of Leslie Crowther. Why Leslie Crowther? A figure I had never thought about since last seeing him in revue in Edinburgh 40 years earlier. At one o'clock London time I tuned into the BBC whose newsreader altered her tone appropriately at the end of the bulletin to announce that "the comedian Leslie Crowther died early this morning." I wondered whether I'd left my radio on overnight.

Dr Brian Wood

Two coincidences with a point 1. I was a squaddie in the army in Cyprus during the Suez crisis (just to put a time frame). The others in the tent knew I was a biologist, and brought me in a chameleon they had found. We kept this as a pet and admired its fly catching technique. Later, I was employed as entomologist on a citrus plantation there, and was interested to develop the natural biological control of the pests, rather than spraying vast amounts of insecticide. A famous "mentor" from University of California came to see what we were doing.

Faulty car radio?

What are the odds of playing a CD on your car CD-player, switching to the radio and your radio is not working? At least, that is what I thought when the radio was playing the exact same song, at the same time, note for note, word for word as the CD I had just switched from. It wasn't anything in the charts either so not something being played frequently. reply.

Mr John Mitchell

There we were in bed having a nice cup of tea (thinking about whether to have a boiled egg or a bacon sandwich) while discussing what time we needed to leave tomorrow to go to a house warming party, and up pops the brother of the party's host on the radio. Bizarre!

Car sale

In 1980 (aged 22) I travelled across the USA from East to West with 3 friends in a 2nd hand gold Chevrolet Impala estate car, a journey of 4 and a half months. At the end of the trip, in San Francisco, we sold the car to a group of German lads who were going to travel from West to East.

Three in one

About two years ago, we had an employee move to a new job and although we were all relatively good friends, we hadn't heard from him nearly five months after he left. During a quiet moment on morning, we were sat around talking and I asked if anyone had heard from Chris? "No", was the reply, and then the phone rang... Sure enough it was Chris making contact. After a brief chat, the phone went down. And rang again. "Could I make an appointment to see Chris please?", was the request from the lady on the phone...

Strange encounter

My late husband, Bill Embery, from Preston, Lancs., shared his unusual surname with his cousin, also Bill Embery. I was born and raised in Middlesbrough and met Bill when he came over to work at ICI in Redcar. We eventually moved to Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire, where I worked in the office of a school. One of the teachers returned from a cruise holiday where they had shared a table with Bill Embery and his wife Marie, from Preston, Lancs.

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