Insanely unlikely coincidences

[biggytitbo]

I can't work out if this is an insanely unlikely coincidence or just a slightly unlikely coincidence -



That's John Lennon in an amusing false moustache from the badly received 1967 Christmas TV special Magical Mystery Tour. The way the film is cropped shows a sign that says 'the best way to go is by M&D C'.

Lennon was of course, at least officially, murdered in 1980 by Mark David Chapman. Can't work out exactly how unlikely this is but i'd say 'fucking' at least.

There's that other famous one about Kennedy and Lincoln and all the similarities, and loads of apocryphal ones.

There's a good, real one, about identical twins separated at birth who led near identical lives. Both were sherrifs, both had a dog named Toy, both were married twice to women named Linda and Betty, both had sons named James Allen - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27188642

What are the chances of that happening?

[weekender]

I need a poo and you are a twat.

What are the chances of that happening?

[Ian Drunken Smurf]

In 1997 I was a student on a Year Abroad in Austria. I met a guy from London called Chris, who was also a language assistant (he'd done it as a spur of the moment thing, rather than as part of a languages degree). We kept in touch after we finished our year abroad. This summer he returned to visit Vienna - to see a girl from Vienna he'd met in Spain on his Year abroad as part of his languages degree - so we met for lunch. The girl he was with said she was about to go to N.E. East to be a German Language Assistant. Turns out she teaches with a girl from my degree course.

[black_betty]

[biggytitbo]

In 1997 I was a student on a Year Abroad in Austria. I met a guy from London called Chris, who was also a language assistant (he'd done it as a spur of the moment thing, rather than as part of a languages degree). We kept in touch after we finished our year abroad. This summer he returned to visit Vienna - to see a girl from Vienna he'd met in Spain on his Year abroad as part of his languages degree - so we met for lunch. The girl he was with said she was about to go to N.E. East to be a German Language Assistant. Turns out she teaches with a girl from my degree course.

^^ I've read this 7 times and I still can't understand it.

I am fascinated by coincidences though. They must just happen naturally of course, because billions of events happen every second so it'd be weird if none of them coincided in unpredictable ways. It's just very interesting how we see and interpret them.

[jobotic]

Maidstone & District Coaches?

[Ian Drunken Smurf]

^^ I've read this 7 times and I still can't understand it.

I am fascinated by coincidences though. They must just happen naturally of course, because billions of events happen every second so it'd be weird if none of them coincided in unpredictable ways. It's just very interesting how we see and interpret them.

The TL;DR version: friend of mine from year abroad where I now live's current bird from where I live teaches with a girl I was an uni with.

[biggytitbo]

The TL;DR version: friend of mine from year abroad where I now live's current bird from where I live teaches with a girl I was an uni with.

Thats not helped if I'm honest.

[Ian Drunken Smurf]

Insane innit... Think of it as a convoluted version of Danny Dyer's family tree...

[black_betty]

Thats not helped if I'm honest.

Didn't help me either - what are the chances!

[Gulftastic]

In Top Secret, Val Kilmer plays a singer and is seen going through some doors.

Years later......

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

^^ I've read this 7 times and I still can't understand it.

I am fascinated by coincidences though. They must just happen naturally of course, because billions of events happen every second so it'd be weird if none of them coincided in unpredictable ways. It's just very interesting how we see and interpret them.

Jacques Vallée goes into coincidences in one of his books - Masters of Deception, I think. He explains the really extraordinary ones by positing a universe which works a bit like Freudian free association; with events linked together by personal significance and major narrative themes, rather than just by their proximity in time and space. Since everything is the manifestation of a unified consciousness anyway, it really wouldn't surprise me. Unless a really weird coincidence happened to me of course, in which case it would. Obviously.

[Cerys]

In Top Secret, Val Kilmer plays a singer and is seen going through some doors.

Years later......

And in Top Secret he's seen sticking his head out of a toilet.  In The Doors he is seen sitting on a toilet singing. Crazy!

[Thomas]

I'm of the distinctly unmystical view that stuff happens and sometimes two things can seem similar, especially when we are evolutionarily tuned to notice and realise patterns.

One of my favourites is the unknowing foreshadowing of the Titanic disaster in a novella fourteen years earlier.

An 'unsinkable' ship, called the Titan, is travelling across the Atlantic Ocean on an April night. It strikes an iceberg on its starboard side, and most of those onboard die in the sinking because they're aren't enough lifeboats.

Following the Titanic's sinking, some people credited Robertson with clairvoyance. Robertson denied this, claiming the similarities were explained by his extensive knowledge of shipbuilding and maritime trends.

Extensive knowledge of shipbuilding and maritime trends, or extensive knowledge of the future?

[biggytitbo]

The clairvoyant is of course, the legendary 1986 sitcom starring portly actor Roy Kinnear. Within 2 years he was dead, falling off a horse whilst pretending to be a musketeer.


If thats not spooky I don't know what is.

[biggytitbo]

I'm of the distinctly unmystical view that stuff happens and sometimes two things can seem similar, especially when we are evolutionarily tuned to notice and realise patterns.

One of my favourites is the unknowing foreshadowing of the Titanic disaster in a novella fourteen years earlier.

An 'unsinkable' ship, called the Titan, is travelling across the Atlantic Ocean on an April night. It strikes an iceberg on its starboard side, and most of those onboard die in the sinking because they're aren't enough lifeboats.

Extensive knowledge of shipbuilding and maritime trends, or extensive knowledge of the future?

The most interesting thing about that is the Titan was written by a man named Morgan Robertson in 1898. Two years earlier he wrote a much less well know book called Terminal, about a steam driven machine from the future that is projected back in time to exterminate a woman from Victorian times who was going to give birth to a man who would later be arrested for a series of vicious assaults on industrial mangles.

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

Including video stills there must be millions of pictures of John Lennon with various letters in the same shot. I'm only surprised that there's not a more obvious coincidence to be found.

[Eight Taiwanese Teenagers]

At least we've got some insight into how the biggytittbo brain works though.

[maett]

I had a long distance relationship with a Korean girl, she grew up, lived and studied in a city 150 miles from Seoul. We broke up. 3 years later when I moved to Seoul I got a job with a company that had 15 branches in Seoul, I was placed at an academy randomly and was surprised to find out that the girl had moved to Seoul and now worked in the nearest Hospital, practically across the street only a five minute walk.   
We did not rekindle our romance.
She suspected nothing of my transcontinental stalking.
Nah, it really was a coincidence.

[biggytitbo]

Including video stills there must be millions of pictures of John Lennon with various letters in the same shot. I'm only surprised that there's not a more obvious coincidence to be found.

Mmm not really. It'll top out at 10s of thousands at the most, and only a fraction of those will feature 3 letters juxtiposed next to both Lennon and a phrase related to dying. And of that subset, those that feature the letters m, d and c will be in a very small minority of 1.

The still is mind bogglingly unlikely, but that doesn't make it anything less than an amazing coincidence.

[Glebe]

The way the film is cropped shows a sign that says 'the best way to go is by M&D C'.

Wow! Mark Ampersand David Chapman!

[Steven]

It's a massive coincidence David Blaine gave himself six attempts to force a card and failed.

[Twed]

Mmm not really. It'll top out at 10s of thousands at the most, and only a fraction of those will feature 3 letters juxtiposed next to both Lennon and a phrase related to dying. And of that subset, those that feature the letters m, d and c will be in a very small minority of 1.

No it isn't, because the set of things people could come up with to intersect with the set of all of the letters/phrases situated next to Lennon in photos is huge - limitless even. Your fundamental mistake is that you're trying to figure out the probability for one particular instance after the fact. You just aren't grasping the mathematics of it.

http://www.dave-reed.com/Nifty/randSeq.html
ohq sod ruv hhd umv btb bid axx uru fcu

biggytitbo?!

First try on generating ten three-letter sequences. Who would have thought that something would match anything I could come up with in my mind that is related to this thread? (the answer is: anybody who understands this stuff at all)

[Twed]

Maybe I could make this clearer with a further example.

If you made up a phrase like "John Lennon leaves The Beatles in 1969" and tried to find an image containing something along the lines of "J.L. closes 1969" outside of a shop then it would be unlikely to turn up.

But if you root around all the images of John Lennon sat next to signs, you have the limits of your imagination to choose from when matching 'spooky' things to it. Thousands of things per image. You're going to find them all the fucking time. Paul is dead.

[JesusAndYourBush]

But if you root around all the images of John Lennon sat next to signs, you have the limits of your imagination to choose from when matching 'spooky' things to it. Thousands of things per image. You're going to find them all the fucking time. Paul is dead.

I typed John Lennon into Google images to see how easy it is.  Less than a minute.



On 27th Nov 1966 John filmed an episode of Not Only But Also when this photo was taken.
In September 1969 John made a home movie called Self Portrait, a film which featured his member only.
Spooky!

[koeman]

In Top Secret, Val Kilmer plays a singer and is seen going through some doors.

Years later......

He appeared on Stars in Their Eyes?

[Ray Travez]

I met my girl Chrissiebrmc on CaB, and the weird coincidence is that we both first joined a bank at exactly the same branch; 114 London Road BN1.

[Ptolemy Ptarmigan]

I typed John Lennon into Google images to see how easy it is.  Less than a minute.



On 27th Nov 1966 John filmed an episode of Not Only But Also when this photo was taken.
In September 1969 John made a home movie called Self Portrait, a film which featured his member only.
Spooky!

At the time of the photo, he was a Member of the British Empire - and that medal he excitedly gave to his Aunt Mimi for safekeeping with the words "My Ennoblement Glee, Mrs", an exact anagram of the words in the photo, "Gentlemen, Members Only".

[koeman]

The clairvoyant is of course, the legendary 1986 sitcom starring portly actor Roy Kinnear. Within 2 years he was dead, falling off a horse whilst pretending to be a musketeer.


If thats not spooky I don't know what is.

A small wooden tile landed on my balcony this morning. On it was written the word 'peach' in English and Chinese, with the phonetic Chinese as well, and a small picture of a peach. So my wife decided to learn how to say it in Chinese, and it's pronounced something like 'tow-zer'. I asked if she remembered the cartoon dog, Tower. She didn't, so I Googled it, and discovered that the cartoon was voiced by Roy Kinnear. Came on here, read this thread, first post I saw was this one mentioning Roy Kinnear.

Now that's a coincidence.

[weaseldust]

i went to uni 270 miles away from my home town and somehow ended up living in the same university halls, a couple of doors down from someone who i sat at the same table with in my a-level photography class back home