A Very Morbid set of coincidences

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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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I worked for a number of years as an Industrial control systems Engineer which basically involves writing computer software to automate Industrial processes and over the duration of that carreer, I worked mainly in three types of industrial applications which were Nuclear, Chemical ,and Water. In order to carry out my work, i had to divide my time between preparing software in an office based enviroment, then once the software was ready to the satisfaction of the client, I would take a laptop computer with me , and install/commission the software for its intended purpouse on site. The main locations I worked at , were the British Nuclear fuels site at Sellafield in Cumbria, Croda Chemicals in East Yorkshire, and for Essex Water Authority. My work for Essex Water, was concerned principally at 5 water treatment facilities but also involved about half a dozen other locations. Now for the coincidences - One of the specific locations I worked at over the period was Hanningfield water treatment works which is near Chelmsford in Essex. Over the course of 20 years, I visited Hanningfield approx 30 times, but over that same period I visited other sites approx 400 times , and here's where things start to get a bit spooky. The very first time I visited Hanningfield was on August 19th 1987. This was the day of the Hungerford Massacre. I was also at Hanningfield on March 13th 1996, the day of the Dunblane Massacre. I was also their on 11th September 2001 . The day the twin towers in New York were destroyed by Suicide Terrorists, and finally :- I was their on the 7th July 2005 , the day London was attacked by suicide terrorists!!! I am not making any of this up. All these incidents involved extremely violent attacks involving suicide by the perpetrators !! I spent only a small proportion of my site work at hanningfield (approx 5% in total) , and my time their was an even smaller proportion of the entire time I spent in that career (approx 0.5%). Also, I never spent prolonged periods on any site (including Hanningfield). It was mainly just the odd day visit here and there, interspersed by either visits to other sites, or office based preparation work. I have a suspicion that I was also at Hanningfiled on the day of another suicide massacre somewhere in Europe but cant recall the excact event. All the above are absolute certainties which I have always wondered about, and finally sat down to record on your website. I would be more than happy to give more details of the above, and to investigate this possible 5th situation, if my case was taken up for close scrutiny.
Total votes: 147
Date submitted:Tue, 07 Feb 2012 07:38:38 +0000Coincidence ID:5955