Bizarre coincidences

[Graham Orm]

I was in the sea with my 4 kids overseeing them snorkelling in the shallows on a very quiet beach in North Wales. One of them got bored and went back to mum who was sat on the beach. After she had gone it struck me that I could have used her snorkel and mask myself, so I started back up the beach to get it from her..... there, right in direct line between me and my wife was a perfectly good adult snorkel and mask washed up. I still have it and use it to this day. There was no one within 200 yards of us on the beach.

When on holiday in Rome we were looking through a box of old post cards in an antique shop. My wife found one that had been sent thirty years earlier from India to an address 10 doors away from where we live!

How can these things happen? The odds must be uncountable, but they happen.

Anyone else???

 

[Racers]

Yep

Morpeth followed me around for years, every place we went had a Morpeth road, it was on the news a lot and we had a toaster made in a factory on Morpeth road.
So we called one of our cats Morpeth, sadly we had to have her put down a few months ago.

Miss Morpeth the cat by maddpete, on Flickr

Pete

 

[bugbear]

Unlikely things happen all the time. Reason being, whilst the odds of an unlikely thing happening are low, the total numbers of things that happen is much larger.

Good article:

http://www.davidmyers.org/Brix?pageID=91

Eloquent (IMHO) summary:

That a particular specified event or coincidence will occur is very unlikely. That some astonishing unspecified events will occur is certain. That is why remarkable coincidences are noted in hindsight, not predicted with foresight.


Edit; found a good BBC feature

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2012042 ... oincidence

BugBear

 

[Graham Orm]

Unlikely things happen all the time. Reason being, whilst the odds of an unlikely thing happening are low, the total numbers of things that happen is much larger.

Good article:

http://www.davidmyers.org/Brix?pageID=9 ... ?pageID=91

Eloquent (IMHO) summary:

That a particular specified event or coincidence will occur is very unlikely. That some astonishing unspecified events will occur is certain. That is why remarkable coincidences are noted in hindsight, not predicted with foresight.


Edit; found a good BBC feature

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2012042 ... oincidence

BugBear

1st Link not working BB. 2nd Link excellent. Proves how possible it is for life to form simply by all the requirements being in one spot by pure chance.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I picked up the phone. How's things with you? so on so forth... Fine, thanks, Pete. Phil? Yes. Phil? Yes. Why aren't you Ian? Pete? What do you mean why aren't I Ian? It was my friend Pete trying to get hold of my friend Ian. We'd changed our phone number and gone ex directory. We'd been given Ian's old phone number.

 

[Racers]

I had to set up a telephone line on a small exchange in a outlying building, so I picked the first available spare channel set up the number.
I went to the office where the number was required connected the tone generator to the socket to locate the line back at the exchange and it was connected to the channel I had set the number up on!

Pete

 

[Water-Mark]

I got caught short on a beach once and had to use my snorkel to wee into my mask, I then burried them in the sand.
Feeling guilty i returned an hour later to dispose of them properly only to find someone else had done it for me, what are the chances of that?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

That was in North Wales, was it?

 

[Graham Orm]

I got caught short on a beach once and had to use my snorkel to wee into my mask, I then burried them in the sand.
Feeling guilty i returned an hour later to dispose of them properly only to find someone else had done it for me, what are the chances of that?

Haha, I though it tasted salty, put it down to the sea.

 

[Steve Maskery]

I used to have a cabaret magic act. Yes really.

One trick was an invisible deck of cards. The Member Of The Audience would take the invisible deck, shuffle them and choose one at random. Then seal it in an invisible envelope, seal that inside a real envelope and then, when that real envelope was opened, inside was a real envelope, containing a real card, which just happened to be the same as the invisible one that the MOTA had chosen. I did that trick hundreds of times.

One night I was booked to appear at a Hall Party for students (for which read inebriated young people) at Nottingham University. One guy was heckling me and so I decided to get him involved. He chose the 3 of Hearts. Fine, no problem, I carried on, but for some bizarre reason, I managed to produce the 4H.

So I find myself in front of a couple of hundred people with the wrong card in my hand, back to the audience. But I did not realise what was wrong. I knew something was wrong but I did not click what it was, I was too busy with my patter.

So when I asked the MOTA to confirm what card he had chosen, his drunken, heckling answer was, "4H, make it the 4H!"

So I just turned the card round and said, as cool as a cucumber, "OK, change your mind, see if I care". I got a standing ovation. He didn't speak again.

Afterwards I thought about it. It was the only time I made a mistake. It was the only time anyone had tried to mess me about. Both things coincided and he changed his mind to the very card I had mistakenly produced. I have no idea what the odds of that are.

 

[Graham Orm]

I used to have a cabaret magic act. Yes really.

One trick was an invisible deck of cards. The Member Of The Audience would take the invisible deck, shuffle them and choose one at random. The seal it in an invisible envelope, seal that inside a real envelope and then, when that real envelope opened, inside was a real envelope, containing a real card, which just happened to be the same as the invisible one that the MOTA had chosen. I did that trick hundreds of times.

One night I was booked to appear at a Hall Party for students (for which read inebriated young people) at Nottingham University. One guy was heckling me and so I decided to get him involved. He chose the 3 of Hearts. Fine, no problem, I carried on, but for some bizarre reason, I managed to produce the 4H.

So I find myself in front of a couple of hundred people with the wrong card in my hand, back to the audience. But I did not realise what was wrong. I knew something was wrong but I did not click what it was, I was too busy with my patter.

So when I asked the MOTA to confirm what card he had chosen, his drunken, heckling answer was, "4H, make it the 4H!"

So I just turned the card round and said, as cool as a cucumber, "OK, change your mind, see if I care". I got a standing ovation. He didn't speak again.

Afterwards I thought about it. It was the only time I made a mistake. It was the only time anyone had tried to mess me about. Both things coincided and he changed his mind to the very card I had mistakenly produced. I have no idea what the odds of that are.

WOW! How does this happen?????

 

[Steve Maskery]

It's magic.
S

 

[Graham Orm]

I love close up magic like that Steve, are you going to include some in your opening night at the workshop?

Did you see the Magician on Britain's Got Talent? He did a trick very similar to the one you describe.

 

[TrimTheKing]

Saw that today, the £50 note trick! Amazing!

Mark

 

[Steve Maskery]

I did, he was rather good, wasn't he?
I'd never watched BGT until last weekend, and I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I am hooked,
The French ventriloquist from last week was also excellent with the talking dog. I saw an act like that in the late 70's.

The vent was called Albert Saveen. He had a dummy called Daisy May, and a mechanical talking parrot, but he also had a real dog that talked just like that. Very, very clever.
Albert Saveen was retired even then, and only performed because he was a mate of the President who was hosting the evening. I feel privileged to have seen him. It was part of Music Hall history.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

yeah but did you see the dog that kept trying to savage Ant/Dec (whichever it was)? Now that was a class act!

 

[whiskywill]

The dog didn't talk. It was fitted with a false mechanical mouth operated by his master. Sorry to spoil the illusion. (hammer)

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Didn't succeed either, did it?

 

[woodchip]

I went paint balling a few years ago and got talking to a chap at lunchtime that I'd never met before. He told me his mum and dad lived in Australia. I told him that my sister was currently on a two year working holiday in Australia. He said his mum worked in a bank, so did my sister. Is she called Julie? he asked, yes she is I said. Turned out that his mum had given my sister Xmas dinner as she was away from her family.


I was in a supermarket in Lanzarote, the bloke being served before me looked familiar, he turned round and recognised me, he is one of my customers from halifax.


Me and the lad who works for me were in the cafe on Tuesday, he was telling me about a kids party he'd been to at the weekend where the child's father had a bar in his garage. As we were crossing the road to go back to work a van tooted at us. It was the bloke he'd been talking about.

Almost makes you think there may be a higher power

 

[Graham Orm]

All spooky stuff!