PHOTOGRAPHS CONTAINING A SURPRISE

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understandinguncertainty.org was produced by the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk based in the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. The aim was to help improve the way that uncertainty and risk are discussed in society, and show how probability and statistics can be both useful and entertaining.

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The biggest coincidence I have experienced occurred when I was about 16 or 17 years of age. I am now 73. On the evening that it occurred a teenage friend of mine and I planned to go out together, and we visited his sister’s house for the purpose, as I recall it, of enabling him to have a bath. While I was waiting for my friend I sat down in the lounge of his sister’s house and. to while the time away, began flicking through a publication that I think was entitled ‘A Pictorial History of the Second World War’* or something similar. This publication comprised 10 or 12 red hard-covered volumes and was housed in a small wooden bookcase that had been purchased with the books.* I cannot remember whether I flicked through one volume of the publication only or more than one, but I came across a picture of a large landing craft on a Normandy beach from which, as I recall it, soldiers and vehicles were embarking. The soldiers were dressed in full battle dress with foliage on their helmets, and I recognised one of them as the husband of my friend’s sister i.e. the person in whose house I was sitting. I immediately drew the photograph to the attention of the gentleman concerned and he confirmed that the photograph was indeed of him. I met my teenage friend recently and he informed me that, some years ago, his sister had recalled this incident and asked him if he knew the whereabouts of the volume containing her husband’s photograph and one day he had found it in his loft and returned it to her. Whether she still has it or not I do not know, but she is still alive and kicking at 93 and I hope to find out. *The publication in question may have been Hutchinson’s Pictorial History of the War some of the editions of which was, I have ascertained from the internet, published in red volumes.
Total votes: 205
Date submitted:Sun, 09 Jul 2017 13:28:22 +0000Coincidence ID:9299