Cambridge Coincidences Collection

Well I Never!

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

Indirectly Linked Through a Movie

Just over 35 years ago when I was living in Killarney, Co Kerry, I had randomly arranged with a friend one evening to go to the movies. I can’t recall the name of the film but Edward Woodward was in the cast. On meeting up with my friend she introduced me to Michael, a young guy she’d recently become acquainted who was visiting Killarney.

The German, my brother and me.

Whilst I was on company business in Brussels in the 1990s, a German colleague of mine got talking to another German, when I joined the conversation I discovered this man had met my brother the week before in Germany at a trade show.

Eiffel Tower

My daughter Ruth met a friend from school at the top of the Eiffel Tower, whilst we were on holiday in Aug 2009.

MATCHING NAMES

My eldest son had a Year 5 teacher called Mrs G and a Year 6 teacher called Mrs R. When he went to secondary school, he was placed in 'Beaufort' house. Around that same I time, I started working for a school with a Head teacher called Mr G and a Deputy called Mrs R. Neither were any relation to my son's 2 previous teachers.

Name confusion

I have the same name as someone else I work with in a big company. I used to get emails for them all the time - once or twice a week, on occasions several in one day. I changed my email profile to have my job title in brackets, it made little difference, I changed it again - this time to show my business unit. This stopped the problem entirely. This morning I remarked for the first time that I've not had a mis-addressed email in over a year. This afternoon I had one. What are the odds! (and add the odds of my seeing this the same day!)

Mr

A few weeks before Xmas 2012, I bought my first ever Beige Corduroy Jacket and on wearing it on 2-3 occasions was asked by friends jokingly, "when's the chemistry lesson going to start?" or "you look like a school teacher".......I pointed out to them that for the full "teacher look", the jacket needed leather sew on patches on the outside of the elbows.....they all agreed. In between Xmas and New Year my wife and I, had the onerous task of emptying the house of my recently passed Mother-in Law, whilst sorting out one of the rooms, my wife opened a drawer and

Distant Relatives

I go to a weekly German class and every year we have a weekend in Germany to improve our knowledge of the language.One evening we were all discussing our reasons for learning the language and one of our frinds said her father's side of the family had originally come from Germany and that she had a great uncle in Leeds who used to run an engineering company,we were amazed because her great uncle is my wife's uncle and all the years we have been friends we never knew.

Pint Shot Riot

Was texting a friend last summer asking if he was coming out for a drink on Friday night. I noticed whilst texting that the word 'pint' also spelt 'shot' and 'riot' due to the nature of predictive texting. I mentioned this in my text to my friend and within five minutes my friend rang me and sounded extremely worried. He went on to explain he was currently in a hotel room in York and had met an old friend he had not seen for many years on a train the previous day. This old friend asked my friend if he had heard any good music lately.

Job interview

I was living in Portland, Maine (USA), and was going to be interviewing for a job in Rochester, NY in a week or two. I had never met or spoken with the interviewing manager. Before this interview, I had to travel to Santa Clara for business at the same time that a golf tournament was being played at Pebble Beach. I visited the golf tournament, which was being played across three different golf courses, and got caught in a rain storm. I took cover under a nearby deck. While waiting for the rain to pass I over heard someone near me having a conversation about Rochester, NY.

happy campers (eventually)

We hired a tent from an outdoor store located in Kettering in Northamptonshire to take with us on our annual holiday to Hayle in Cornwall. When we tried to erect the tent we discovered that the shop had packed the wrong size canvas in the bag. We phoned the company to find out what we should do i.e. hire another tent locally or do B&B instead etc. The person who answered the phone asked if we had phoned before - another customer with the wrong size canvas had also contacted them - they were located in Redruth, about 8 to 10 miles away!

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