Cambridge Coincidences Collection

Well I Never!

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

Birthday coincidence

Hello Mine, my sister's (4 yrs younger) & my mother's birthday is on the 11th February.

Mountain meeting

This is one of many. I drove 150 miles with friends and was walking on top of a mountain in the Peaks, and coming towards me was one of my neighbours !

CD / radio coincidence

I was listening to a Killers album on CD one day, when I wandered into another room and switched on a radio. The song playing on the radio was not only the same track (Mr Brightside), but the two songs were perfectly synchronized. I turned the radio volume up, and there was no discernible difference in timings. When there is a delay, even a slight one, it is very obvious to the listener. It occurred to me that the radio must be acting as a speaker by some strange phenomenon, but then the song finished and my CD moved on to the next track while the radio DJ introduced another song.

Sweet Music

About 10 years ago I was poking around Corbridge parish church about 12 miles west of Newcastle. A quartet were practising for a concert they were giving in the church that night. I had a chat to the slightly Beethovian cellist and quartet leader, and I asked him where he was from - they were giving the concert as part of a small local festival. Oh, from the south east, he said. I was from the south east, so I asked where. Oh, from a place called Berkhamsted, he said. I was from Berkhamsted (a town between Watford and Aylesbury), so I asked where.

Distant airport Duty Free

Returning from a Honeymoon in Bali the flight stopped off at Abu Dabi airport to refuel. My wife and I decided to leave the plane and have a quick look around the duty free shops in the terminal. I went to one shop and was standing at the electronics counter when I recognised a voice next to me. The person was a work colleague who was on his way back from a holiday in Australia but had missed the flight he was supposed to be on and ended up on a different flight that meant he had to change planes at Abi Dabi.

Spitfire story

I used to have an electronic archiving company. Our first client in 1999 was The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight at RAF Coningsby for whom we scanned many thousands of Warbird drawings. In September 1999 we decided to scan a copy of the Daily Telegraph to demonstrate the power of our software (which could find any page using keyword searches). I volunteered to bring in an old edition which I'd kept from the day my son was born (15/4/1983).

Work colleague finds old photos of me in his new house

As a student I worked in medical records in a London Hospital. A new colleague came in one morning saying he had moved into a new house over the weekend and found photos of me in a drawer. Turns out he had moved into the house that my friend had just moved out of. My friend had left some photos, including some of me, in the drawer!

swiss army knife

When i was a kid, i would guess around the age of 10, on a hot summers day, my friends and i had been playing football in the local park. We all sat down for a rest, i could see something metal protruding from the soil, so i excavated it carefully and it was a swiss army knife with the name "LUKE" engraved on the outer case!

I know that book!

we were selling our house and showing around a young couple. The man picked a book out of our extensive collection of books and said "my parents wrote that book". It was a specialised psychology book that would not have been in general circulation. They bought the house!

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 :-)

Pages