The coincidence thread

I'm from York, and my youngest daughter was at an event near Hull on Saturday morning. So my wife and eldest daughter decided to spend the morning in Hull. A city which was once home to my Nana and her mother, until they were bombed in the Hull Blitz in May 1941, and then moved to York.

We decided to park near the station and walk down to the waterfront as it was a beautiful morning, and have a look some of the arty/craft shops in the fairly recently redeveloped Fruit Market area near the waterfront. Here we found a lovely cafe and stopped for breakfast.

https://i.imgur.com/qWkTRMt.png

The café was located on the corner of Humber St and Queen St, and was on the ground floor of a modern building, seen on right hand side of the map above.

I knew my nana (who's no longer with us) lived in a pub, which was hit by a bomb in the Blitz and later in the day text my uncle to ask whereabouts in Hull the pub was. And here's the coincidence –*the pub (named The London Hotel) was located on the very spot where we'd had breakfast. He sent me a report from the night of the raids...

https://i.imgur.com/hJ8Bh6U.jpeg

The two people rescued alive from the demolished building was my Nana and her mum. My nana would have been 100 years old in May, and was 16/17 years old when they were bombed out of their home and moved to The Golden Ball Pub in York where her aunty was landlady. She joined the WAF, met my grandad and the rest is history.

I'm sure everyone's had some weird coincidences, what's yours?...

I am a reference librarian at a public library in a city of about 60,000. After recently moving to a 100-year-old house, I discovered that one of the original owners had been a reference librarian at the same library in the 1920s.

I palled around with a lad at school in early ‘70s, and went fishing with him. His father was a ship's captain.

Anyway - fast forward to 1977: I left my jacket in a bar in a suburb near Trenton, New Jersey. It had my passport and flight ticket in one of the pockets.

Went back next evening, and was told by the owner that it was handed in by a fella who hailed from Glasgow.
The guy came over, and after thanking him – he said that he recognised the address (Clarkston) as he came from Knightswood, but he had an aunt who lived in Clarkston who had died in the Clarkston Toll disaster in 1971.

He told me that she had worked in the City Bakeries shop around the centre of the blast area.
I asked him: “Did your aunt live with the ‘Fisher’ family in Hillend Rd?”

"Yes!"

He was absolutely amazed at the question, especially when I went on to say: “I knew your aunt – she used to make cheese toasties for me and her grandson Geoffrey some Sundays”

Life has many strange, significant events.

That is quite a coincidence, but also quite a story regarding your Nana.

I was a refugee in Zagreb, Croatia (from Sarajevo, Bosnia) and lived in a shelter there. My mom got a job cleaning for the head of OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) for the area who was stationed in Zagreb, who had just replaced his predecessor who had been promoted to head all of the Balkans operations (including Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania, etc.). About 7-8 years later I met my wife-to-be on an arts community online forum. I was living in Chicago and she in Yorkshire. We connected over arts, science fiction, music, etc. Got married, had a back and forth US/UK relationship for a few years, and then eventually settled here in Yorkshire. I knew her father lived mostly abroad, stationed in Vienna. We went to visit him and it turned out he was that OSCE predecessor who not only lived in the same apartment my mother was cleaning (and which I visited) but was also instrumental in so many things which happened in Bosnia which shaped our lives. When we went to meet him at his work we ended up having sushi in the OSCE headquarters building. It really made it feel like the world is very small indeed.

I was working down in Nigeria for a couple of weeks on a project.

A month after returning, I was up in Caithness visiting my old mum, and my car broke down.
Called AA Relay and they sent out a fella from a local garage with a transporter.
He drove me and my sister home to Edinburgh with the car on the back,
Enroute – he mentioned that he had been a marine engineer prior to taking over the family garage, and that his son was also a marine engineer with Maersk.

I told him that I was a 4^th generation Chief Engineer, and asked if his son was on Maersk Container ships?

“No – he’s on the offshore vessel Maersk Shipper down in Nigeria, he sent me a load of photos from a Thruster renewal project he was on”

“I was the project engineer on that job – and was onboard Shipper briefly”

I hadn’t met his son, as he was on nightshift at the time. Anyway – he was so impressed at the coincidence – he phoned his wife from the cab !

2 weeks later – I went off on a bike holiday to Germany with a new group. In the bar on the ferry, one of the lads was bitching about getting a speeding ticket near Pitlochry driving a coach.

I asked him: “Was that at Bankfoot on Sunday the ** driving a Megabus?”
“Yes! How the hell do you know that?”

“I was in a car transporter right behind you, and saw the flash, and glanced down at our speedo. It was under 60”
“The transporter with the silver Mercedes on it?”
“Yup!”.

So - in one journey from Caithness to Edinburgh - past and future events were linked up.

In 1986, after graduating, two pals and me went touring Europe in a VW campervan. In San Remo we spent an evening in a bar and, on walking back to our campsite, passed another GB registered campervan with the lights still on.

We decided to go back and say hello and, after about five minutes chatting I recognised him as the owner of the farm on the Pennines next door to the farm I grew up on and father of the kids we used to play with as children.

I got married at a small resort in St Lucia, my (ex)wife were there for 2 weeks and with it being a small resort recognised most couples there after a few days. I live in Milton Keynes, and within a week of my return...

1. at a music festival in Finsbury Park, queueing for a drink I saw in the queue next to me one of the lads staying at the resort.

2. on way to work in Holborn I bumped into another couple who were at the resort.

In the early 90s I was on holiday in Australia's Red Centre and MrsA and I signed up for a nighttime outing for a meal in the middle of nowhere and to view the stars in total darkness. There were 12 of us on the trip, eating our supper at a trestle table when the complete stranger next to me said "are you Peter A's brother?" - they'd picked up on some snippets of conversation about my home town and the similarity of my and my brother's voices. The friendly stranger used to eat regularly in the pub where my brother worked.

On another holiday me, my wife and her parents walked into a restaurant in Hermanus in South Africa, only to find ourselves seated next to my parent-in-laws' neighbours - neither knew of the other's holiday plans so the surprise was very evident. Sometimes it's a very small world!

Aged 25, I moved to Manchester. I met a Brazilian woman there. She asked me if I had been in São Paulo the previous December. I had been and she had seen me there and now she recognised me.

About fifteen years ago one of my stepdaughters, after digging into her family history, decided that she wanted to see the house in London where her great grandfather had lived. He'd walked from there to Leicestershire in the 1920s, to look for work. So we went there with her mum and her sister, and it turned out to be in the same street as an ex-girlfriend's house in Fulham. Almost directly opposite.

We were in NYC in 2018. As we were walking into our hotel to check in we literally bumped into a family walking down the street. They stepped around our bags, we all said our pleasantries and went on our merry ways.

We saw that family again on the ferry to Liberty Island the next day, in Starbucks at the ESB the day after that and they were sat at the next bench table to us in Central park two days later. What are the odds of that in a city so big?

About 7 years ago, I was trying to find some more information on a relative that was shot down in WW2 .. we know a good amount about what happened but for some reason a few years ago I went into a bit of a rabbit hole about it trying to find more.

I had a small pile of photos and the circumstances of his loss (shot down over the arctic circle).

Not long after I had posted the thread a relative of one of the other crew on the same plane stumbled on the thread. They had LETTERS my relative had written to the family of this other crew member and even had another photo of him we had never seen. Similarly we had a photo of their relative we could share.

We were able to share the pictures, letter and story with my grandmother, for it was her brother who had been lost.

I still can't quite fathom the fortunate timing of this person happening upon the discussion just when our family had decided to start searching for more information. A truly remarkable coincidence.

On my 42nd birthday in 2002 I treated myself to a trip down to London. I'd been back in Derby for a few months by this time and often used to go there on a Saturday, although this was a Tuesday as it happens.

In the car on the way down I turned the radio on to find a documentary about The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and Douglas Adams. The number 42 was discussed. Adams had chosen it at random to be the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything, it was disclosed.

Later, after I'd arrived in London I realised the significance of the limited edition IWC XV that I was wearing. It was number 42 of a limited edition of 50 (the white dial Gadebusch model). It had 42/50 engraved on the back. I did wear if reasonably often but hadn't thought about the number when I'd put it on.

On the way back up to Derby in the early evening I turned the car radio on again and switched to Radio 2. They were broadcasting a documentary about the musical 42nd Street.

Here’s mine (posted on the forum previously, so this is a cut and paste of that post). My Dad has sadly passed away since this event.

In the 1950’s my Dad joined the RAF as a boy entrant. The trade he learnt was that of radio operator. He learnt morse code and part of his training took place at Bletchley Park.

Since leaving the RAF he has never lost his love for radio communications and has remained an enthusiastic amateur radio operator, still talking to other amateurs via morse code.

Roll forward to 2014 – my Christmas present to my folks was, in the new year, to hire a nice car, drive them up to Bletchley to stay in a hotel and visit the museum etc. The date for the visit was this weekend just passed.

As part of Dad’s radio interest, he remains a member of the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB). When amateur radio enthusiasts make contact with one another, they often send QSL cards to one another confirming the details of the contact. These are not dissimilar to postcards. Due to the prohibitive costs of sending individual cards out one at a time, the RSGB has bureaus set up where cards are periodically sent to a number of voluntary members. These are then sorted by the member call-signs and duly posted on to the recipients when there are enough cards to send in one envelope.

Dad is one of the volunteers and looks after cards for a range of call-signs, whose owners can be located anywhere in the UK, from the 20,000+ membership of the RSGB. This week he received a batch of cards to sort and one members envelope was full enough ready to send on. He didn’t have time to go to a post office so he passed the envelope to my Mum to put in her handbag, and said they would find a post-box sometime over the weekend during our trip to Bletchley.

We drove up to Milton Keynes on Saturday, as planned, and checked in to our hotel. There was no obvious post-box, so the envelope was forgotten and remained in my Mum’s handbag. Fast forward to this morning and we set off on the short journey from Milton Keynes to Bletchely Park.

Wandering around the museum, amazed by the brilliance of the work done there, we noticed a sign saying that the National Radio Centre, part of the RSGB was located within Bletchley Park. Dad didn’t know this so we wandered in to have a look. They have a high tech radio rig set up (call-sign GB3RS) and there was a guy making contacts on the radio and talking to visitors about how it all works. Dad had a chat and introduced himself, as these guys do, by his call-sign (G4WSX). There was one other radio amateur operator there so Dad got talking to him. During the conversation, it was mentioned that Dad does the bureau card sorting and the guy asked which call-sign ranges my Dad did. My Dad replied, saying he looked after the G4 to G7 range and the (insert some other) range. The guy replied saying his call-sign was a G7 prefix, which happens to be within the range my Dad looks after. What were the chances of that? – certainly a fair old coincidence. indeed.

Dad then asked “So what’s your full call-sign then? I’ll check if I have any cards for you when I get home”

The guy replies with his full call-sign.

Dad looked shocked.

“Open your bag” he gestured towards my Mum, “and pass me that envelope”

She reached in and handed him the envelope.

Yes, you’ve guessed it – the cards were for the very same man we were standing next to, having a conversation with !!

I have no idea what the odds of that happening are, but it is ridiculously improbable.

We were all stunned. I still am.

That may have bored you – sorry if it did, but I had to write it down as it was an incredible moment that just happened to take place in a truly incredible place, where improbable odds were overcome to safeguard all of our futures with the work of the wonderful code-breakers during WW2.

Think i posted this before on a similar thread but many years ago when i worked for a main dealer we sold a rather problematic Range Rover. The vehicle came back with small niggles but one of them was a noise from the driveline that only happened intermittently under all sorts of conditions.
We had the vehicle back and because it was just out of warranty obviously it was down to us to foot the bill. Sadly the warranty company wouldn't cover it as at the time we didn't have a definite fault to report to them and so we started swapping numerous components to it which were harvested from another vehicle which was also for sale. After hours and hours spent on it we and several days work swapping bits we finally admitted defeat, the main issue was the intermittent nature of the fault which happened very quickly and was difficult to pin point.
Anyway the sales team rang the guy and advised that we couldn't locate the fault and so we offered him a replacement of a similar vehicle or a refund.
As he really liked the vehicle he opted for a replacement vehicle and so they started the hunt for another one of similar colour, age. Condition, mileage etc.
We acquired the replacement vehicle from a dealer in Scotland and it was delivered to us, i was around with the sales team sorting out the weeks work and the guy who was sorting the replacement car paperwork came in the office and said “you'll never believe this”
Out of all the cars that are sold world wide, up and down the country we had acquired the very next vehicle off the production line…..the chassis number was one on from the faulty vehicle. Wonder what the chances of that are?

I was in a small town in Alaska in the 90s (Skagway - population 800) and waiting for a payphone to call home. A young fella was clearly struggling to dial a number. Noticing he was English, I asked if I could help. He showed me the number, and the area code was the same as mine - Orpington, Kent. Turns out he lived 2 doors away.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Halitosis

I was in a small town in Alaska in the 90s (Skagway - population 800) and waiting for a payphone to call home. A young fella was clearly struggling to dial a number. Noticing he was English, I asked if I could help. He showed me the number, and the area code was the same as mine - Orpington, Kent. Turns out he lived 2 doors away.

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I was there in ‘79, November. Loved it out of tourist season.

In the early 90's my wife and I were living in London, we drove up to NE Scotland to visit her sister and Brother in Law. The B.I.L is a farmer, so we were dragged off to an agricultural show (Turiff I think) - where lo and behold I bumped into one of my bosses.

I applied for a job in NZ, was chatting to my potential employers about my heritage (I am from Trinidad) and he said one of his close friends lives in Trinidad, he asked me if I knew them (Trinidad is small but not that small I thought). I have never heard of him so I called my brother (who still lives in Trinidad and runs a block factory) and this same friend was factory buying blocks from my brother recently, and had done business with them in the past. He rang my NZ contact and said good things about my brother and father and in a way probably helped me get the job offer.

I just remembered this one. When I was 13 I stupidly rode my BMX quite far from my own neighbourhood and got mugged by three older teenagers, 16-17. They took my bike and my Levi's jeans. The leader of the group forced me to trade trousers with him and gave me his filthy old ones. Two years later the war in Bosnia started and while the newspapers were still publishing obituaries, maybe a month or so into the war, there he was, one of the first victims of shelling. But that's not the coincidence... it turns out he was my cousin. If it was a small village, OK, but this was Sarajevo, a city of about 400k people at the time.

MrsV and I are related.

One of her great great greats married one of mine in the mid 1800s, so thanks for making things awkward ancestry.com

Do you have a third eye in the middle of your foreheads, webbed feet, and play the banjo?


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I was in the same class with a lad in North Wales 1983 only to move to Oxford in 1990 and end up in his class again.


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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nealywheelie

Do you have a third eye in the middle of your foreheads, webbed feet, and play the banjo?

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Yes

I was reading the novel "The Fourth protocol", by Frederick Forsyth, on my bus to school. As I was passing a BP petrol station on Glasgow's Great Western Road, a character in the novel was being stabbed to death at the very same location.

On a work call today the UPS driver dropped off a package from Sinn
We were discussing a project on the same street as the Sinn factory.
The guys on the call turned the camera around and you could see the factory out the window.

Robbie Brightwell was a schoolmate of my Dads.
Robbie and Anne Packer were at my mum and dad’s wedding.
My ex wife used to work for Robbie at Le Coq Sportif in Holmes Chapel ten years before we met.