September the 19th is Huntrodds Day, a celebration of coincidence and of a husband and wife who were both born on September the 19th 1600, married on that day and then died on the same day in 1680 within five hours of each other.
It’s a time to throw Huntrodds parties: Celebrations of coincidence where 23 people, preferably strangers, meet and share facts about their lives in the hope that they will stumble on a coincidence.
The aim is the find as many interesting coincidences as possible before rewarding the best one. A lot of readers have probably never heard of this little celebration, this is because the day was invented by Sir David Spiegelhalter, a famous Cambridge statistician, when he chanced upon the Huntrodds’ gravestone in a graveyard in Whitby. What a coincidence you may say, but then Sir Spiegelhalter hunts out coincidences, like Joyce and Ron Pulsford, who were both born on August 8 1928, meaning that they celebrated turning 80 together on 08.08.08. Or like the less happy story of a French girl whose father walked out on her and never spoke to her again until ten years later when she moved to London, walked into the cafe below her flat and saw him making sandwiches.
These stories all tend to grab our attention because of their apparent incredibility. However there are over six billion people on earth marrying, separating, moving and walking into cafes 24 hours a day so it seems obvious that some of their paths would coincide. Sir Spiegelhalter created Huntrodds day to make us think about this fact. The reason for the number 23? In a room with 23 people the chances are 50/50 that two people will share the same birthday … it’s a good start.