Elaine M

My strange coincidences:

I went into hospital when in my twenties (yes ok, a very long time ago!) and found myself in a side ward with three other women, two of whom had the same birthday as me; the third lady's husband also had the same birthday. Even more unusual as my birthday is Valentine's day and until then I'd never met anyone else with the same birthday.

My second coincidence was when I took my then young children to school, shortly after returning to Yorkshire following 13 years of living elsewhere, and met a lady in the school playground who I'd worked with in London about 6 years previously. She rarely dropped her kids off as she was usually at work but happened to be at home on that day.

The third was when I made a call from work in Yorkshire to one of the senior managers in my organisation based in London to follow up a query I'd raised with him. A lady answered the phone and offered to take a message. She recognised my name and it turned out she worked for me in London eight years earlier.

There are more I'm sure but these are my favourites!

Elaine M

EEL

When we moved to a small town in WA in the 70s some neighbours came to say hello. The husband turned out to be someone that my Dad had in the 50s spent a week's holiday from school with. This was in India and they had not had any contact from the 1950s until they met up 20 years later in a little town in the north west of Western Australia.

ABCDiamond

My sister's birthday is Valentine's day too.

CHnJ

(From http://www.geocities.com/Omegaman_UK/chance.html)

The chances of meeting someone on a train with whom you share an acquaintance are therefore surprisigly high: for the UK population, it's around 1 in 100. If you also include socio-ecomomic factors that boost the numbers of people from particular backgrounds travelling by train to particular destinations, the chances rise even higher.

Take another "coincidence": discovering you share the same birth- day as someone. How big a gathering of people do you think you'd need to get odds better than 50:50 that at least two shared your birthday?As there are 365 possible birthdays you might guess the answer to be about half of 365-about 180 people. In fact, you need just 23.

This is because you're not asking for a match between a specific birthday - say ,April 12. All you want is a match between any two birthdays and any two people.This reduces the numbers of people needed to produce the "coincidence". To find at least two people born on April 12, you'd need over 250 people to give odds better than 50:50.

The less specific you are about what you want, the more likely coincidences become. If you stand by phone-boxes waiting for a re-run of Jason Pegler's experience, you're in for a long wait. But if you only want someone somewhere in the UK to have something similar happen to them as they pass a phone-box, the chances increase dramatically.

There is another effect at work behind some coincidences. They often seem surprising because we mix up two different probabillties: one - the chances of something interesting happening,and,two-the chances of something interesting happening after it has been given many opportunities to occur.

For example, the chances of getting a winning "double six" in a single throw of two dice is 1 in 36. But the probability of getting at least one from 25 attempts is 50:50.The more you try, the better your chances - but it's easy to forget the number of "tries" involved in real-life coinciences. How many millions of people walk past phone boxes each day, but never find a friend on the other end of the line if it happens to ring?

Gill and Rob

One of the patients on the ward I worked on {here in NZ }was telling me that the Church Minister who had just visited her and had been chatting to me, had a son working in London, and asked if I knew him. I laughed as we are from the NE of England, but I explained I have a sister working in London. Meanwhile my sister had to have some involvement with the HR dept for the Health Authority she works for, and the guy appointed to deal with was a kiwi, who she found out was from the town we are in...... turns out it was the Ministers son !!!! SPOOKY


Even more SPOOKY, Robs, mates' wife looks after an old lady, in the UK, whose sister emigrated to the same town as us in NZ 40+ years ago. We arranged to meet up with her and it turns out she does voluntary with for the same Church Minister.

Gill

Elaine M

Wow! Another one:scared:

What year was she born? The other coincidence connected with my birthday is that in the year I was born (1961) Valentine's Day was also Shrove Tuesday aka Pancake Day. As far as I know, the two have never coincided again since; Shrove Tuesday has been one day away in one year, and exactly a week away in another year, but never actually on 14 February.

I wonder when it will happen again - does anyone know?

Elaine M

ABCDiamond

1958, but don't tell her I told you !!

sophia

Hey Elaine,

My birthday is Valentines day too...and I've never met anyone with the same birthday...until I read this thread!!:scared:

love sophia xx

Elaine M

Sophia,

Even more of us in the Valentine's Day club then!

You may have picked up in my other posts that my sister(in Adelaide)'s husband's mum also has the same birthday.

We had a double celebration family lunch on the day, in Adelaide while I was on my validation trip (no, not a double lunch, before Bix picks me up on it, just a double celebration!)

Elaine M

Bix

I must be getting predictable Elaine

Your talk of birthdays has reminded me of a coincidence in my life as my sons were both born on 12 May two years apart.

So when they were younger we only had one birthday party to worry about albeit twice the size of most

Actually I don't call it coincidence as much as good planning


Trivia snippet - when the eldest was 4 he was twice the age of the youngest and that will never occur again

Phoenixuk2oz

I recent amazing coincidence:

Village where we live has an antique shop. Kept meaning to go for 6 years but never got there. One day mum came to visit and asked if I fancied going. OK I said......"want to see if they've any photos of our village to take with me to Oz" [wanted a reminder of where we lived in UK].

Went to look round shop. Lady owner apologised as no photos. Said never had any of village......tended to find they were in the local pubs and landlords reluctant to sell as part of village history.

Then mum started talking to lady shop owner....and talking......and talking.......

Whilst waiting for both to stop yakking.......a chap walks in with a picture under his arm. We both stand politely looking at each other while we wait for mum/shop owner to stop having a yadda.

After few mins......I ask him if he's found anything interesting to buy [in terms of picture under his arm]. He says "nope....am here to sell not buy".Turns out he's selling off stuff cos he's moving to Oz!!

"Wot a coincidence" I say....also explaining we too are emigrating to Oz.

Then he shows me the photo. Its an old photograph [approx 65yrs old] taken exactly where we live except my house hadn't been built at that time.

Picture showed an old toll booth [apparently had to pay to enter the village at one time], a church......and gravestones:scared: and apart from our house not being there everything else had hardly changed over the years. A picture going back in time but capturing exactly where we now lived.............

Now thats wot I call spooky!!!:scared: :scared: ..............

Phoenixuk2oz

Jack The Lad

After all that did you buy the picture

Bix

3 to 1 on it's a no

Phoenixuk2oz

Eye, eye Jack I did buy the piccy [soz but you were wrong Bix]

Phoenixuk2oz

Elaine M

Hi Bix,

My ex-husband's birthday is May 12th

Continuing the birthday/good planning theme, not really a coincidence but more of an observation:

My daughters' birthdays are in late September (born around the due date) and late October (born two weeks early).

I've always reckoned they were my Christmas present and birtrhday present respectively.

Elaine M