Cambridge Coincidences Collection

Well I Never!

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

family coincidence discovered after meeting my wife

When I met my wife (that's another story all together about how that happened!), we fell for one another immediately. It was like lightning bolts had struck us both. I couldn't wait to get to know her and asked her out immediately. We went to dinner the day we met and started talking about family. I was living in Maryland at the time (that is where we met) and she was working for a company in Arkansas.

a strange coincidence about a cat........

This story actually encompasses two coincidences. After I met my wife, we began to discuss family stories and I showed her some photos from my college days, including one of me in my cap and gown standing in front of the townhouse that I lived in while in school. My wife immediately recognized the townhouse development. She said "that's English Village in Memphis.

Matching Vivid Memories

This morning i woke up with a vivid memory of this atheletic choker like necklace. A little background about the necklace In 2010 while i was in 5th grade they were a fad lots of my peers wore them, they were suppose to give you energy or something weird like that but really it just caught on because everyone was wearing them especially atheletes. I always wanted one never got one though. anyway this morning (2019) I woke up and started havinf a vivid memory about all of this even picturing a the dark blue choker like cord with writing on it and circles on the ends.

Died on same date

My mother Lillian died on January 6,2002 around 4:00 pm This year her brother Michael and my fathers brother Roy both died January 6, 2019. One at 2:30 am the other at 4:00 pm.

Strange coincidence in Lab

I cannot remimber the date , but it was in 2016 , while I was working in Laboratory in Riyadh , as a unit assistant . I receive a lab request with a patient name Saleha Suliman Alessi , and immediately at the same time , another patient with exactly the same name , came with her request !!! I wounder how such uncommon name came at the same time with different MR numbers came together . I asked them : do you know each other , they replayd NO .

Sons Meeting

I’m a designer. I was sitting with a couple designing their kitchen. Had two meetings over two weeks to finalise things. Towards the end of our final meeting I asked if they had children that lived nearby, & we discovered our sons had been in jazz band together in high school in New Jersey. Then we found out they both live in the same area in Boston. We said we would text our sons that night to see if they remembered each other.

Sons Meeting

I’m a designer. I was sitting with a couple designing their kitchen. Had two meetings over two weeks to finalise things. Towards the end of our final meeting I asked if they had children that lived nearby, & we discovered our sons had been in jazz band together in high school in New Jersey. Then we found out they both live in the same area in Boston. We said we would text our sons that night to see if they remembered each other.

Professor

There are two aspects of this coincidence. Firstly, from my point of view I was behaving completely out of character, and secondly the actual coincidence is fairly unlikely. However, the chance of both situations arising is unusual. One morning, probably well before Justin Timberlake was born, I was obsessed by the name 'Timberlake' that would not stop going through my mind. At one stage I was climbing a flight of stairs and I stopped and told myself to get the name out of my head.

Professor

My mind must work in a strange way. One Saturday morning I was thinking that because Gautama Buddha developed a philosophy that was truly revolutionary he was probably much smarter than Jesus. Even today, Buddha's empiricism and scepticism seem very modern. An hour or so after thinking this I entered my local post office and picked up a book of lists, and the compiler obviously had the same idea that I had just had because Buddha's IQ was listed as about 160 (from memory) but Jesus' was about 130.

Professor

I was travelling on a 747 between Sydney, Australia, and London when a noticed a family sitting a few seats away from me, who had got on the plane at Sydney. On arrival in London, I caught a tube to St Pancras station and then a train to Nottingham. I eventually arrived at my friend's house in Beeston. He told me that his next door neighbour had that day returned from Australia. Lo and behold! It was the person who had been on the same plane as me. The chances of this happening are very small indeed.

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