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Coincidences

rynner2 said:
(There was something else too, but it escapes my memory just now...)
Click to expand...
Ah! Got it now...

On Saturday we met the Doctor's new companion, Amy Pond.
I thought then I'd never heard Pond as a surname.

But today in Michael Connelly's book (The Narrows) I find a female FBI agent with the surname Pond.

(The book was published in 2004, but I only started it yesterday.)
 
Just now I read this on AOL -

he average woman worries about her body 252 times a week.

Keep-fit instructor Irene Estry and psychologist Emma Kenny devised an experiment involving 100 women who were asked to carry a clicker to measure how often their body anxieties occurred.

Over the course of a week the women (aged between 35 and 69) experienced negative thoughts about their appearance around 36 times a day.
Click to expand...

Vey interesting, especially as I've already read about that study today, in a magazine while I was on the cross-trainer!
 
Two for you tonight: yesterday my local paper had this story:
Falmouth coastguards pick up distress call from the Titanic
6:30pm Monday 5th April 2010

While it may have been just hours from April 1, a report that coastguards in Falmouth picked up a distress call from a MV Titanic was not an April fools joke.

Staff received the alert at around 5pm on March 31 that the motor yacht, thought to be somewhere off the southern seaboard of the USA was taking on water and suffering from electrical failure with three people on board.

A coastguard spokesman confirmed that the call was not an April Fool and that they passed the details on to the US Coastguard.

He added that the vessel, unlike its famous namesake, was not in any immediate danger.

http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/fp ... e_Titanic/
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And today in Michael Connelly's book (The Narrows) I find the villain has been using a trailer out behind Titanic Rock. 8)

And...

Last week a guy in the pub bought everyone a drink - it turned out he'd won the pub's bonus ball competition. Tonight I learned he'd won it again - in fact, that was the THIRD week running he had won it, with a different number each time! :shock:

This can hardly be fixed (unless you're Derren Brown ;) ) as the Bonus Ball numbers come from the National Lottery. So the odds on winning three times running are one in 49^3, or one in 117,649! :D
 
This evening, I started a new book, a detective story set in Istanbul (a first for me).

Later, I looked at BBC iPlayer; nothing for me on TV, but radio turned up this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... ary_Beard/

Celebrating Istanbul's year as European City of Culture, Professor Mary Beard casts a classicist's eye over the city under the reign of the great Roman Emperor Constantine.

The city's unique position as the bridge between Europe and Asia made it Emperor Constantine's perfect choice as the new capital of his vast Roman Empire. Renamed Constantinople or the 'New Rome', magnificent buildings, gardens and squares in the Roman model were built, including a vast Hippodrome for chariot races. By examining the fates of these incredible classical riches, Mary Beard explores the rich cultural heritage, and many faces, of this unique city.

Istanbul, historically also known as Byzantium and Constantinople, is the largest city in Turkey, and uniquely straddles both the continents of Europe and Asia. It was chosen this year as the join European Capital of Culture. These essays paint five very different and very personal views of this extraordinary city.

Mary Beard is Professor of Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge. She also a regular radio broadcaster and writes a blog for the Times Literary Supplement.

Which was nice! :D
 
Yesterday I was sitting in the bus reading Don DeLillo. At the start of a chapter he mentions seeing a bee-keeper in his protective suit taking care of the school bees.

At the same moment a daughter and father on the seat behind me had the following conversation:
- And there's a special store selling bee keeping goods.
- You don't have bees anymore do you dad?
- No but I still have the protective suit and the smoke thing.

=====

I had decided to re-read a book on prime numbers. The same day I found a lost code wheel with numbers 0-9 that is used in the code locks of those business-briefcases.
 
I spent some time last week on the Geneva lakefront, trying to get a photo of the famous Jet D'Eau - the huge fountain which some may know best as the backdrop to opening of The Champions. :D

In windy weather it gets turned on and off because it drenches passing boats. When it comes on people cheer and applaud and when it goes off they say 'Awwww!'

As the weather was a bit blustery I waited quite a while and took lots of pictures, only a couple of which featured the Jet.

I've had a good look at the photos today, and got to know the view very well. It was a surprise to see the same view again tonight in V on the Syfy channel. :shock:
 
Today I was getting towards the end of my library book, so I bought a local paper in case I ran out of reading material on my travels.

In the book, a honey farmer and one time investigator gets involved with a drugs gang - they torch his beehives as a warning to keep his nose out of their business.

As it happened, I didn't get much time for reading today, but this evening I got round to the paper - and found a story about a bee-keeper in Kingkerswell who had a big hive that was the subject of an arson attack.

(The story isn't on the WMN website, or elsewhere on the web, and I rarely buy a paper anyway, which makes this even more remarkable.)
 
Here's a good one: I've been watching the 80s sitcom It's Garry Shandling's Show on DVD and this morning the episode I saw started with Garry announcing he was going to the beach. He then put in a home video of his last trip to the beach while the theme song played, and it was actually footage of the D-Day landings at Normandy.

Good gag, but what's today's date? That's right, 6th of June - the anniversary of D-Day.
 
This morning I posted part of an obit about one of two wartime RAF men, both called Broom. (They were known as the Flying Brooms!)

A little later I was on a bus, and a young man on board was carrying a broom. (Not something you see every day.) It must have been a new broom, as it still had a shop label on it. The young man got off at the stop before mine, and then the bus passed a chapel holding a funeral service...

It felt like some kind of parable being acted out before me. Old broom deceased, but new broom carries on... (Trigger would have loved it! ;) )
 
A match made at Disney: How a married couple found their paths had crossed as toddlers 20 years earlier
By Rhianna King
Last updated at 8:38 AM on 11th June 2010

Having come from different countries and falling in love at work, Alex and Donna Voutsinas always believed fate played a hand in them getting together.

But now the pair have discovered their destiny could have perhaps been determined when they were small children.
Days before their wedding 20 years later, Mr Voutsinas was looking through his fiancée's childhood photos and was shocked to recognise his father in the background of a family snap at Disney World in Florida as his future wife, then aged five, posed in the foreground.

On closer inspection, he realised the toddler in the pushchair with his father was in fact him.
'Just to be in the same picture with my wife when we were basically toddlers, it’s unbelievable,' Mr Voutsinas said.

The encounter is even more unbelievable given the two families lived in different countries.
At the time the photograph was taken, Mrs Voutsinas was living in Florida and her young husband-to-be was in Canada.

The couple, who have been married eight years and have children of their own, visited Mr Voutsinas's mother's house to unearth her photos from the same day and confirmed that they were in fact at the same place at the same time decades earlier.
'I would have never noticed the background, I've seen the picture through the years and of course I was just looking at me and my brothers,' Mrs Voutsinas said.
'I was glad he proposed before the picture, because I know that it’s because he loves me and not because he thought it was meant to be, it was fate.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... z0qXSIVbYr
 
A very grim coincidence... :(

'We'd have more chance of winning the lottery': Mother and father diagnosed with SAME deadly cancer
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 8:52 AM on 18th June 2010

A mother and father of six children have both been diagnosed with rare life-threatening cancers - at odds of millions to one.
Julia and Kevin Walden are facing radiotherapy over the coming weeks on tumours affecting the same areas of their bodies.
Mr Walden, 47, said: 'There was more chance of us winning the National Lottery than having this happen to us.'

The courageous couple, from Baughurst, Hampshire, know they are facing a difficult battle and have braced themselves for the worst.
Mrs Walden, 38, said they are trying to support each other and the children.
'Emotionally, I have always thought it is not my job to break down, and Kevin turned round and said if I am not breaking down, he won't either,' she said.

Both have conditions affecting their endocrine systems - glands that regulate the body's metabolic rate.
Mr Walden has an extremely rare neuroendocrine cancer, thought to occur in only one person in a million, while his wife is coping with a cancerous tumour that is wrapping itself around the main arteries to her brain.
Last year, she had a benign tumour removed from the pituitary gland in her head - a condition affecting only 10 women a year in England.

''None of us know how long we are going to be here. It is just unbelievable that both of us should be so ill at the same time,' Mr Walden said.
'It is such a strange thing to happen. It is bizarre.'

etc...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... z0rCYFgInS
 
A sort of coincidence:

Motorcyclist dies in Cornish three-vehicle collision
Page last updated at 08:36 GMT, Thursday, 24 June 2010 09:36 UK

A motorcyclist has died in a road collision involving three vehicles in Cornwall.

The crash happened between the Harley Davidson motorcycle, a Ford Focus car and a Ford Transit van in St Austell at about 2020 BST on Wednesday.

The rider, a 27-year-old man from Newquay, suffered fatal injuries at the scene at the junction of Gover Road and Grove Road, police said.

There were no other injuries. The road was closed for seven hours.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/corn ... 400532.stm

The names of the intersecting roads are anagrams of each other

- death by anagram?

(I've checked the map - the intersection does exist.)
 
A few days ago, one of you kind folks, with stronger google fu than I, solved a 40-year-old mystery for me by locating the full lyrics of a song which I had heard once and been singing periodically ever since, but which no one I ever sang it to could ever remember - including the family members who were in the car with me when I heard it.

Last night some friends stayed over. We put them on the futon in the back room over the kitchen; which, in common with most rooms in the house, has no air conditioning. We didn't think it would be a problem, as the hurricanes coming in off the Gulf of Mexico have caused a lot of rain and cooled us down a lot.

In the morning, I went downstairs and started emptying the dishwasher and fixing blueberry pancakes. Noticing that one of our friends had come down to sleep on the padded bench/storage area in the sunroom, I didn't turn on the radio, but after a few minutes started humming my little mystery song, as I've been doing off and on since I learned its identity. I was only two lines into it, however, when she got up and joined me. As she made tea and I kept on working, we heard a loud clatter upstairs. Her husband had rolled too close to the edge of the futon, which tilted over, dumped him off, and righted itself with a loud racket.

The first two lines of the song are "I woke up this morning,/Fell out of my bed."

Now thoroughly awake, the husband joined us in the kitchen, where of course I told them about the song and the coincidence of my singing about falling out of bed right before he really did it.

It turns out, the husband recognized the song - first person ever to do so! (I don't go around singing it for everybody, obviously.) Moreover, when I said I hadn't been able to match it to the Bing Crosby and Hoyt Axton versions I'd scared up on the internet (Axton actually wrote it), he said: "Arlo Guthrie covered that, a long time ago." And though the replay in my head isn't an exact match with Guthrie's voice, it's a really good candidate for the version I heard, given the mutation of memory over time.
 
A grim sort of coincidence:

Second girl killed by automatic gate in a week
A five-year-old has become the second girl to be killed after being trapped by an automatic sliding gate in a week.
Published: 8:00AM BST 05 Jul 2010

Emergency services were called to the scene at Brook Court, Bridgend, south Wales, on Saturday afternoon.

The girl, who has not been named, was taken to the town's Princess of Wales Hospital where she later died.

South Wales Police said a full investigation was under way and her family is being informed. A file is being prepared for the coroner.

The waist-high black metal gate is at the entrance to a small car park at a three-storey apartment building about five minutes walk from the town centre.

The little girl, who lived nearby, was named locally as Carolena and is understood to be eastern European.

Eleanor Jones, who lives opposite the scene, said a large number of police officers were in the street when she returned home about 6.30pm.

The gate was open and deactivated today.

Floral tributes, teddies and cards were left on the railings outside the apartment block.

One read: "Tears are in my eyes when I think about a beautiful little girl lost." Another said: "Peddle your little bike as fast as you can to heaven. Sleep tight little angel."

Local councillor Peter Foley said: "It's a great tragedy. I don't blame the kids for playing here. They should be safe here."

The accident follows the death last Monday of a six-year-old crushed by an electronic gate.

Semelia Campbell was playing with a friend near her home on Carnival Place, Moss Side, Manchester, when the motorised gate closed on her.

The schoolgirl was eventually freed when police broke off an electronic box.

She was rushed to Manchester Royal Infirmary but died from her injuries a short time later.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... -week.html
 
I recently had two happen to me, one of which was genuinely baffling:

1)
I live in the USA, but I'm originally from The Netherlands. Two weeks ago, I was back there, visiting with my parents for their 50th wedding anniversary. I still have a Dutch cell phone that I hadn't switched on for ages, but that I used while I was there.
While having tea with my folks, this phone rang and showed an unknown number. I picked up and it was a representative of the local power company. They were looking for Mr. M. of 36b Dutch Street.
The baffling thing is that my parents live at 36a, so Mr. M. is their next-door neighbour!
I explained this to the rep, and asked how my rarely-used number got associated with my parents' neighbour, but they had no idea...

2)
Back in the USA, while I was driving, a really long ad for a new acne medicine was running on the radio. At its end, they said something like "It really works and we'll prove it." At the very moment they said "prove it", a car passed me which had a personalised license plate that read the same thing.
 
I drove to a nearby town last Friday. On the way out, it started pouring down rain, out of a blue sky, to the point of limiting visibility. The song on the radio was "Take me to the river/Drop me in the water."

On the way home I'd switched to the CD player, on random play. As usually happens at some point on this highway, I got boxed in by some 18-wheelers. The song on the CD player was Jimmy Buffet, "Big Rig."

Both these musical coincidences occurred in the vicinity of the town of New Braunfels, but not along the exact same stretch of highway.
 
I have noticed a tendency to read a word on a website or newspaper and at the exactly same time the word is said on the TV or the radio in the background.
 
SameOldVardoger said:
I have noticed a tendency to read a word on a website or newspaper and at the exactly same time the word is said on the TV or the radio in the background.
Click to expand...

Happens to me too. I'd be more impressed with myself if it happened with whole sentences, though.
 
I got into the car after my appointment with the ear doctor today, feeling light-headed and off-balance and a little worried about driving home, and what did Jimmy Buffet sing when I turned the key?

"But I'm dizzy, so it may be so."

(Defying Gravity)
 
Waiting at the bus stop today, I saw one of the new-style Minis drive past. It was black, and a model I haven't seen before - in fact it looked rather like a miniature hearse, and as it went by I saw it seemed to have two doors in the back, estate-car style.

Barely had the car disappeared from view than another one appeared, going in the opposite direction! The second one was white however, but it seemed to be the same model, complete with double doors at the back.

So, within seconds, I saw two cars of a model new to me! :shock:

(I've had a quick look on the internet, but couldn't spot an identical model there. Maybe some petrolhead will know about this model, unless it's a rare customized design...)

EDIT: Found it! It's a Mini Clubman
http://www.topgear.com/uk/mini/clubman

(Obviously I don't watch Top Gear! ;) )
 
There are quite a lot of these about, certainly around here, and they're far and away one of the ugliest botch-jobs in motoring history. On top of the double rear doors (which, as you can imagine, completely bugger up rearward visibility), they have one passenger door on the left, and two on the right. That's great in most countries, as it means that kids, for instance, can only leave the back seats on the pavement side, and not into the road. Sadly, in the UK, where we drive on the left, the effect is the opposite...
 
British soldier shot in Afghanistan is saved by his ROSARY... just like his great-grandfather in WWII
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 8:01 AM on 3rd August 2010

A soldier who stood on a landmine and was shot in the chest in Afghanistan is convinced a rosary saved his life in exactly the same way as his great-grandfather towards the end of the Second World War.

Glenn Hockton, 19, who is now home from a seven-month tour of duty with the Coldstream Guards in Helmand Province, was on patrol when his rosary suddenly fell from his neck.

His mother Sheri Jones said today: 'He felt like he had a slap on the back. He bent down to pick up his rosary to see if it was broken. As he bent down he realised he was on a landmine.'

Glenn had to stand there for 45 terrifying minutes while his colleagues successfully managed to get to him.
Mrs Jones, from Tye Green, Essex, said she was physically sick when her son rang to tell her of his ordeal.

His great-grandfather Joseph 'Sunny' Truman also credited a rosary with saving his life in a World War II blast that killed six members of his platoon.

He was with the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers and after being captured towards the end of the war, he and other prisoners were forced to march away from the advancing Allied armies.
Mrs Jones, 41, recalled: 'He was walking across a field with half a dozen of his platoon. He bent down to pick something up and was the only one to survive a sudden bomb blast. He had picked up a rosary.'
Before Glenn was deployed to Afghanistan, she said he asked for a rosary to take with him.

etc...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0vd2lwKbk
 
A few weeks ago I saw a photo on t'internet of a note left by a car owner on his vehicle, addressed to the thieves who'd stolen from it and broken his ocarina. I wondered what an ocarina was but didn't look it up and soon forgot about it.

Today I did the Guardian crossword, all except the 'oval instrument' which I didn't know was an ocarina. Then a bit later on, I saw the 'ocarina' note again. Aha, this time I KNEW! ;)

This afto at the gym I was listening to a terrifying story on my ipod (from www.pseudopod.com - free and highly recommended!) about zombies, one of whom ran 'faster than a man with only one foot should have been able to.'

Just then, the subtitles on a fillum running on one of the gym TVs read something like:

Soldier 1 - 'Get in there, place the explosive among the ammunition, get out and keep running!'
Soldier 2 - 'How'll we run with no feet?'

Well, it amused me! :lol:
 
Dramatic night for RNAS Culdrose helicopter
5:10pm Thursday 12th August 2010
By James Toseland »

Last night a helicopter from RNAS Culdrose took part in two medical transfers each with a theatrical flavour.

The 193 search and rescue helicopter was called to the Minack Theatre at Porthcurno where a 47-year-old woman had collapsed before picking up a casualty from ferry the Oscar Wilde.

The crew arrived at the Minack Theatre at 9.20pm where paramedics had been treating the woman on the ground, and the helicopter landed in a nearby field, she was transferred onto the Sea King helicopter flown to the Royal Cornwall Hospital. The show, which was Loves Labours Lost by Shakespeare went on.

At 10.43pm the helicopter was called on board the Oscar Wilde between Lands End and the Scillies where a man was winched from the ship and taken to the Royal Cornwall Hospital.

http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/83 ... er/?ref=mr

Good headline! ;)
And that's the second Medevac from the Minack by a Culdrose chopper this year:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 187#999187
 
This story could go in other threads, but I feel here has priority:

13-year-old struck by lightning on Friday 13th at 13.13
Friday the 13th is often thought of as an unlucky day - and it lived up to its reputation for one youngster.
Published: 7:00AM BST 14 Aug 2010

At precisely 13:13, a boy aged 13 was seen by the St John Ambulance team at Lowestoft Seafront Air Festival in Suffolk after he was struck by lightning, a spokesman said.

The boy suffered a minor burn and was taken to James Paget Hospital, where he is expected to make a full recovery.

Jason Gillingham, county ambulance officer and on scene at the show, said: ''This was a very minor burn to the boy's shoulder, but he was conveyed to hospital and is recovering well."

A second teenager and a woman were also struck by lightning but did not need hospital treatment.

The three were watching a display of the Red Arrows during a downpour when the lightning struck.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... 13.13.html

(The Red Arrows were here only two days earlier - luckily we had fine weather.)
 
This evening I was in the pub reading a book, and one of the characters is a shepherd with highly trained sheepdogs. He also has younger dogs, which are being trained up - they herd ducks! They were giving displays for visitors. Now I'd never heard of this before, although it didn't seem improbable.

Imagine my surprise when I got home and found this story on the beeb website:
Sheepdog turns to herding ducks in Northumberland

A border collie in Northumberland whose owner hopes he can make the English sheepdog team has been honing his skills - by herding ducks.

The talented canine, called Roy, has been in training for a competition which could see him chosen to represent England at future international events.

Owner Emma Gray said the Indian Runner ducks were ideal training for seven-month-old Roy due to their slow speed.

Roy is a hit with visitors to the farm who watch his regular displays.

Ms Gray, 24, who works on her parents' farm near Morpeth, has been working with sheepdogs for two years.

She said: "The dogs know the difference between ducks and sheep, but they are not really bothered as long as they are working.

"It's great fun and I love working with the dogs.

"It is much more entertaining herding ducks and we do displays at the farm which go down well.

"The ducks are a bit more predictable than sheep and cannot run as fast so they do not get away from the dog."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-11062955
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The funny thing is, I had a few problems with this book - it's written by an American, but set in Scotland, and some things don't ring true. But the author seems to have got the Dog and Ducks bit right! :D
 
Another good one: tonight, at 2051, Stormkhan posted a Black Dog story about Penzance:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 18#1015318

I wanted to watch a TV prog on BBC1 at 2100, but when I switched the TV on, the first thing I saw was an ITV costume drama, obviously filmed in Penzance. (This must have been a trailer for something, as I can't find it on the listings.)
 
Yesterday I saw this story:
The matchstick armada: Modeller spends 62 years building a unique fleet of 430 ships that's a tribute to the Royal Navy

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0xnVMqo6Z
Click to expand...
Later I started a new crime book - it has one character, a high-ranking policeman, whose hobby is making models from matchsticks!

What are the chances of that happening,eh? ;)
 
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