Cambridge Coincidences Collection

Well I Never!

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

Mr

Whilst at borading school in the early 1970's I went on a family holiday to Menorca. We arrived late at night and wnet to bed. I woke up early the enxt morning and open the bedroom curtains to see the view. Looking down at the hotel swimming pool there was only one person settling down by a sun lounger. It was the matron from my school! Thereafter, if ill, I was aksed if I wanted to be signed off games rather than being told I was :-)

Birth certificate surprise

I am male and was born in 1968. My surname is not very common, Hern, and my Dad's name Christian name is John. In 1998 I married a girl called Rebecca. Years later, in 2011, when we were sorting through some important documents, I came across my wife's birth certificate. She was born in 1971 and her birth was registered 3 days later by a registrar with the name........ John Hern.

Birthday Coincidence

Hi ther my name is David S my coincidence is being Born on David Street in Dandenong, Melbourne, Australia, Doctor named David K who delivered me, mum named me after king of the jews David, not after the doctor, the Dr. was out fishing in the bay the day I was to be delivered hence he had to come in early to deliver me, also i ended up being a pisces another coincidence, and I see a sequence in my birthdate 12/3/1984 1234 sequence with the 4 being the 4th number of the last set of numbers 1984 to complete it

Rock Paper Scissors

Last night my boyfriend and I were playing "Rock, Paper, Scissors" to decide who had to get up and turn the light off. We picked exactly the same hand shape five times in row before I decided this wasn't going anywhere and gave in! I think the probably of this happening is 1/243 (a 1/3 chance of playing the same shape per game, to the power of 5 games) But, we're not sure: the boyfriend argues that we were subconciously using the same "strategy" and I like to think we've developed some sort of mind reading powers through spending too much time together.

Waterloo

I live just outside Brussels and yesterday whilst driving from Mons to Brussels I put the radio on. I usually always listen to Premiere a French speaking news channel but for some reason instead of pressing pretuned Channel 1, I randomly pressed auto tune and it tuned into a Dutch channel playing abba singing Waterloo. I sang along for a couple of bars then - wait - it can't be, a huge sign on the motorway "Waterloo"; I am driving right past the exit for Waterloo as Abba sing it over and over.

Old friend

I lived in Calgary Alberta and used to drive to Vancouver B.C. once or twice a year to visit my parents On one of these trips a normal stop would be in Kamloops to fill up with fuel, for some reason I decided to skip this stop and try to make it all the way to Vancouver. Well, by the time I got to Merrit B.C. it didn't look like I would make it. I found this old gas station open in town where I had to go. Well here was an old friend I knew from about ten years earlier we had somehow drifted apart.

The Glass Opera T-Shirt Incident

In the late 1990s I worked as a mastering engineer in a low-rent recording and mastering studio somewhere on the European continent. It was the days when access to a CD writer was a special thing. I had the original vinyl recording of Philip Glass' "Einstein On The Beach" Opera and did not want to play it to pieces, so decided to transfer it to CD, while assisting a freelance sound engineer recording a band in the studio next door. I had never met this engineer before, he was a bit older than me and worked at much better gigs than I did.

Twins and eggs

I cracked open an egg to make breakfast and it had 2 yolks. Later that day my friend informed me she was adopting twins.

Meeting on a plane

I was due to fly from Los Angeles to UK but the flight was cancelled and I was rerouted on a flight via Chicago, where I'd have to have a stop-over. After take-off, someone asked if I would change seats so they could sit with a partner, and I moved to an aisle seat. I looked across the aisle, and saw a man reading a chapter in a book I knew on a very specialised academic topic that I have published on. There's probably about ten people in the world really interested in this stuff. Emboldened by free alcohol I introduced myself (can't remember how!).

Friend of a friend of a friend......

At a university party I met a guy who wasnt from my uni but he told me which highschool and what university course he was studying. Also he was moving to Canada in afew weeks or so. The next day I was talking about this guy I met with some friends at univeristy. It so happened that one friend had a friend in the same course as him and knew him. Another friend went to the same highschool as him. The third connection was a week or so later when I was told by a friend that her colleague at work was going to a going away party for aguy who was leaving for Canade. Yes it was him again!

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