Cambridge Coincidences Collection

Well I Never!

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

Identical Phone Number When Moving House From UK to Australia

When we moved house from Worthing to Brisbane the new domestic phone number we were given had exactly the same last five digits (in the same sequence) as our previous phone number in the UK. As you know, numbers in the UK have also have a five digit area code. From memory, numbers in Australia at the time were eight digits long.

See Twig

I was walking the kids to school one wet morning. We passed under a big thick hazel hedge, trying to avoid getting wet. I put the kids on the outside of the pavement and took the inner position myself. A twig poked behind my glasses. As I turned my eyes to avoid it I saw the name on a passing van: C. Twigg. This is the oddest coincidence I have experienced but there have been so many, it almost seems normal. My husband and I have rung each other at exactly the same time so many times, I wonder why we needed a phone. Anne

Radio coincidence

In 2003 Classic FM played two pieces that I had voted for in an evening programme. I had voted for these pieces in the station's annual 'Hall of Fame' vote. On the same programme two pieces were played chosen by someone else who I'd never heard of. My parents leter told me that they knew the parents of the other person.

Cambridge CoIncidence

I had posted my story about the Cardiff wrong number, and then decided to look at other posted accounts. The account posted just prior to mine was similar in that it was a chance 'phone encounter'.

Wedding coincidence

My parents married in 1956 a month after Dad finished his national service and their best man Brian was a chap who my father had done national service with. After a few years Brian moved away with his job and they lost touch and didn't see each other for 15 or 20 years. One day there was a knock on my parents door and it was Brian - he had had to visit my parents home town for a work meeting and had looked them up and called in on the offchance.

Guessing a number

When I started as a first year university student, I joined a queue with other students to get a locker allocated and receive a key. Bored, and for not particular reason apart from boredom, I asked myself whether the key would be no. 521. When my turn came, some 15 minutes later, I was given key no. 521. I was so surprised I at first did not take the key and asked why I had been given that one. As can be imagined, I was given an odd look and asked what was wrong with it whereupon I took it and left. In the queue, I had not guessed lots of different numbers, just the one.

Same place, same time

Last weekend I was walking my dogs down a long narrow lane near my home. A couple walking their dog approached in the opposite direction, and as we came closer a cyclist appeared behind them. We all met at exactly the same place in the long narrow lane in a melee of people and dogs! I experience this quite often whilst driving. Why is it that I always seem to meet a bus or lorry at the narrowest part of the road? Why does there seem to be a cyclist on every blind bend just as I arrive?

Mrs M S and July 18th

My father was born on July 18th, his father died on July 18th, I had a miscarriage on July 18th and 1 year later my son was born on July 18th

Dates of birth, meeting

My birth was finally registered in Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia on the 8th. of August, 1951. (I was born in Ndola, on the 17th. of June, 1951.) Twenty years later, our elder son and first child was born in London on the 8th. of August, 1971. A year before, I met my parents-in-law for the first time on the 8th. of August, 1970. In 1951 and 1971, there were strikes at both hospitals of the births. "Coincidence is God's way of remaining invisible." I heard someone say on the radio decades ago...

Elizabeth C

I have one brother. My parents died on our birthdays. My father died on 4th January 1976, my brother's 30th birthday and my mother died on my 61st birthday 14th May 2009.

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