Latest news with #coincidence
BBC News
14-07-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Baby boy joy as 12 born to staff on Lincoln hospital ward
Staff on a hospital ward have given birth to 12 baby boys in three years – with not a girl in nurses and other healthcare professionals were all permanent members of staff on the Rainforest ward at Lincoln County a community children's nurse and mum to 18-month-old Olly, said: "Everyone just says, well you're going to have a boy, because you've either touched something on the ward or there's something in the water."It's quite nice to be part of the boy mum clan." "It's amazing," she added. "We've all been able to talk about our experiences, labour, different ages and developments. It's so good to be able to relate with one another." Her colleague Ellie, a junior sister on the ward, said: "It's just such a weird coincidence. "I think I knew I was having a boy, because everyone else was. It's just what we do on Rainforest." The story is tinged with sadness as the 12th baby boy, Caleb, died at 23 weeks into the pregnancy – though mum Emily says she is happy to a part of the the mums and sons got together this week, Caleb was represented by a beautiful blue teddy is one of two children's wards at the hospital and features a play room and sensory a community nurse and mum to Archie, described the number of boys – rather than girls – being born to staff there as "a bit surreal"."More just keep on being added to the boy gang," she said. Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here. Click here to download the BBC News app from the App Store for iPhone and here to download the BBC News app from Google Play for Android devices.
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Colin Brazier: The day I discovered my millionaire grandfather
Five years ago, while explaining his conversion to Catholicism, America's vice-president, JD Vance, wrote that coincidences were evidence of 'the touch of God'. But how improbable need events be before rational explanations falter? I ask this, not for a friend, but myself. Last month, on Friday the 13th no less, something happened which stretches statistical credulity. And since I am already a Catholic, I am not minded to dismiss it as happenstance. I was sitting with my daughter at Lord's Cricket Ground when a message landed in my LinkedIn inbox. It was from a stranger, a woman claiming to be my aunt. A recent DNA test had apparently revealed the link. Without going into details, her story checked out. She also included two pictures of a man, bearing an unmistakable likeness to me, standing in front of a very grand house. This, she said, was my paternal grandfather, James JJ Doyle. Her disclosure was, to put it mildly, a surprise. I was raised knowing nothing about my father's side of the family (indeed, I had only learnt my father's true identity as a young man). Now, out-of-blue, came my grandfather's story. James 'Jimmy' Doyle was born in 1930 into extreme poverty in Hastings, where – coincidentally – I spent half a year training to be a journalist. He was a poor boy made good, up to a point. A spell in prison for handling stolen antiques (he was exposed by Esther Rantzen on That's Life) did not prevent a social ascent of Becky Sharp velocity. He became a property developer and in 1971 pulled off the biggest coup of his career. After 20 years of trying, he finally bought Wykehurst Place, a 105-room country house set in 180-acres of Sussex countryside. Doyle spent millions in today's money on a huge restoration project. Nikolaus Pevsner and Ian Nairn, in their influential series The Buildings Of England, described it as the 'epitome of high Victorian showiness and licence'. The house became the setting for films like The Eagle Has Landed starring Michael Caine. According to my newly-discovered aunt, her father was a man of strong dynastic instincts. His yearning for a male heir to inherit the family pile was never requited (he had seven daughters). The reality, unknown to him, was that he had fathered a boy as a teenager in Brighton. That baby, adopted by a couple far away in Yorkshire, became my father. Neither knew of the other's existence. Sadly, Doyle's life ultimately ended in ruin and despair. After divorce and bankruptcy, he killed himself in 1995. Learning of all this made me reflect that in a world where DNA home-testing kits are cheap and widely available, the discovery of hidden branches of family trees must be increasingly commonplace. Doyle's story was simply more colourful, and ultimately tragic, than many. But the genetic science that has made this possible is about more than ancestry tests. In the eternal debate about what makes people who they are, DNA now dominates the argument. Geneticists talk of characteristics as something we are born with, innate – not bred into us or learnt. When I look at the parallels between my life and that of my grandfather, do I see coincidence or genetic predisposition? Doyle had seven daughters and a son. I had a son and five daughters. Does that suggest a biological sex-bias in our DNA, something in our genes which made us both more likely to beget girls? Or, is it broader than that? There is evidence to suggest a genetic predisposition towards the decision to have children at all. What might feel like an act of free-will may actually have more to do with what lurks in our double-helix. Some scientists even believe that personality-traits like an openness to religion are genetically encoded. God-botherers like me are just born that way, it seems. But how to explain the other stuff? As anyone who has followed my 35-year-long career in television will testify (BBC, Sky, GB News), over the decades I have moved sharply and publicly to the Right. On X, I post regularly about immigration issues, motivated to a great extent by my upbringing in Bradford, a city used (disastrously in my view) as a giant laboratory for multiculturalism. Doyle, though ostensibly a businessman, was also of the Right. He founded the Racial Preservation Society, which campaigned in the 1960s and 1970s for an end to mass immigration. Until Friday the 13th, I had never heard of the Racial Preservation Society, nor of The British Independent, a newspaper founded and funded by Doyle. When I discovered Doyle's politics I was half-way through proof-reading a book about anti-Semitism for a Jewish friend. I have no time for racists. But I am also part of a growing cohort of commentators online and elsewhere who refuse to be shutdown by ideological enemies who use that slur to limit legitimate debate. I think Britain faces tough questions about its demographic future, and I am trying to explore them in the pages of The Salisbury Review, a conservative quarterly founded by the philosopher Roger Scruton and where I am now assistant editor. I have no idea how it compares to Doyle's British Independent. Yet it is odd that we should both be involved in Right-wing writing. If family formation and religiosity can be attributed to DNA, what about politics? But where does genetics stop and coincidence begin? And, indeed, where does a coincidence become so improbable that it veers beyond the bounds of reasonable likelihood? It is odd that I should call my only son John Joseph, even though I never knew James JJ (John Joseph) Doyle. It is strange that my grandfather, when he sold Wykehurst Park in 1981, should buy a slightly lesser mansion, now apparently inhabited by a famous English journalist and media personality (Piers Morgan). Yet these are everyday coincidences. How, though, to account for Bolney? I had never heard of Bolney, a village in Sussex, until a friend gave me a Virgin voucher as a wedding present last year. It was for a tour around a vineyard located there. We forgot all about it until, while my wife was organising her desk six weeks ago, she stumbled upon the card and noticed that the gift was about to expire. We decided to book a room there and spend a day walking on the South Downs. That was a few days before Friday the 13th. There are more than 6,000 villages in Britain and yet the one that had come to our attention was the very village in which Wykehurst Place sits. The home, not just of a vineyard, but of my paternal grandfather. What are the odds? The dictionary defines a coincidence as 'a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection'. I prefer the definition given by the late Alistair Cooke, long-time and much-loved host of BBC radio's Letter From America. Extreme coincidence was, he said in a letter about the subject in 2001, a potential gift of grace. 'Somebody,' he said, 'is saying 'stay the course' … reminding you that they have you in mind.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Colin Brazier: The day I discovered my millionaire grandfather
Five years ago, while explaining his conversion to Catholicism, America's vice-president, JD Vance, wrote that coincidences were evidence of 'the touch of God'. But how improbable need events be before rational explanations falter? I ask this, not for a friend, but myself. Last month, on Friday the 13th no less, something happened which stretches statistical credulity. And since I am already a Catholic, I am not minded to dismiss it as happenstance. I was sitting with my daughter at Lord's Cricket Ground when a message landed in my LinkedIn inbox. It was from a stranger, a woman claiming to be my aunt. A recent DNA test had apparently revealed the link. Without going into details, her story checked out. She also included two pictures of a man, bearing an unmistakable likeness to me, standing in front of a very grand house. This, she said, was my paternal grandfather, James JJ Doyle. Her disclosure was, to put it mildly, a surprise. I was raised knowing nothing about my father's side of the family (indeed, I had only learnt my father's true identity as a young man). Now, out-of-blue, came my grandfather's story. James 'Jimmy' Doyle was born in 1930 into extreme poverty in Hastings, where – coincidentally – I spent half a year training to be a journalist. He was a poor boy made good, up to a point. A spell in prison for handling stolen antiques (he was exposed by Esther Rantzen on That's Life) did not prevent a social ascent of Becky Sharp velocity. He became a property developer and in 1971 pulled off the biggest coup of his career. After 20 years of trying, he finally bought Wykehurst Place, a 105-room country house set in 180-acres of Sussex countryside. Doyle spent millions in today's money on a huge restoration project. Nikolaus Pevsner and Ian Nairn, in their influential series The Buildings Of England, described it as the 'epitome of high Victorian showiness and licence'. The house became the setting for films like The Eagle Has Landed starring Michael Caine. According to my newly-discovered aunt, her father was a man of strong dynastic instincts. His yearning for a male heir to inherit the family pile was never requited (he had seven daughters). The reality, unknown to him, was that he had fathered a boy as a teenager in Brighton. That baby, adopted by a couple far away in Yorkshire, became my father. Neither knew of the other's existence. Sadly, Doyle's life ultimately ended in ruin and despair. After divorce and bankruptcy, he killed himself in 1995. Learning of all this made me reflect that in a world where DNA home-testing kits are cheap and widely available, the discovery of hidden branches of family trees must be increasingly commonplace. Doyle's story was simply more colourful, and ultimately tragic, than many. But the genetic science that has made this possible is about more than ancestry tests. In the eternal debate about what makes people who they are, DNA now dominates the argument. Geneticists talk of characteristics as something we are born with, innate – not bred into us or learnt. When I look at the parallels between my life and that of my grandfather, do I see coincidence or genetic predisposition? Doyle had seven daughters and a son. I had a son and five daughters. Does that suggest a biological sex-bias in our DNA, something in our genes which made us both more likely to beget girls? Or, is it broader than that? There is evidence to suggest a genetic predisposition towards the decision to have children at all. What might feel like an act of free-will may actually have more to do with what lurks in our double-helix. Some scientists even believe that personality-traits like an openness to religion are genetically encoded. God-botherers like me are just born that way, it seems. But how to explain the other stuff? As anyone who has followed my 35-year-long career in television will testify (BBC, Sky, GB News), over the decades I have moved sharply and publicly to the Right. On X, I post regularly about immigration issues, motivated to a great extent by my upbringing in Bradford, a city used (disastrously in my view) as a giant laboratory for multiculturalism. Doyle, though ostensibly a businessman, was also of the Right. He founded the Racial Preservation Society, which campaigned in the 1960s and 1970s for an end to mass immigration. Until Friday the 13th, I had never heard of the Racial Preservation Society, nor of The British Independent, a newspaper founded and funded by Doyle. When I discovered Doyle's politics I was half-way through proof-reading a book about anti-Semitism for a Jewish friend. I have no time for racists. But I am also part of a growing cohort of commentators online and elsewhere who refuse to be shutdown by ideological enemies who use that slur to limit legitimate debate. I think Britain faces tough questions about its demographic future, and I am trying to explore them in the pages of The Salisbury Review, a conservative quarterly founded by the philosopher Roger Scruton and where I am now assistant editor. I have no idea how it compares to Doyle's British Independent. Yet it is odd that we should both be involved in Right-wing writing. If family formation and religiosity can be attributed to DNA, what about politics? But where does genetics stop and coincidence begin? And, indeed, where does a coincidence become so improbable that it veers beyond the bounds of reasonable likelihood? It is odd that I should call my only son John Joseph, even though I never knew James JJ (John Joseph) Doyle. It is strange that my grandfather, when he sold Wykehurst Park in 1981, should buy a slightly lesser mansion, now apparently inhabited by a famous English journalist and media personality (Piers Morgan). Yet these are everyday coincidences. How, though, to account for Bolney? I had never heard of Bolney, a village in Sussex, until a friend gave me a Virgin voucher as a wedding present last year. It was for a tour around a vineyard located there. We forgot all about it until, while my wife was organising her desk six weeks ago, she stumbled upon the card and noticed that the gift was about to expire. We decided to book a room there and spend a day walking on the South Downs. That was a few days before Friday the 13th. There are more than 6,000 villages in Britain and yet the one that had come to our attention was the very village in which Wykehurst Place sits. The home, not just of a vineyard, but of my paternal grandfather. What are the odds? The dictionary defines a coincidence as 'a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection'. I prefer the definition given by the late Alistair Cooke, long-time and much-loved host of BBC radio's Letter From America. Extreme coincidence was, he said in a letter about the subject in 2001, a potential gift of grace. 'Somebody,' he said, 'is saying 'stay the course' … reminding you that they have you in mind.'
Times of Oman
15-06-2025
- Times of Oman
Seat 11A: Unlikely link between survivors of two plane crashes
Muscat: A striking coincidence has emerged from two unrelated plane crashes decades apart: In both cases, the only survivors were seated in seat 11A. In 1998, Thai singer Ruangsak Loychusak survived the crash of Thai Airways Flight TG261 while seated in 11A. The flight went down in southern Thailand, killing 101 of the 146 passengers and crew. Loychusak, then 20, sustained severe injuries, including spinal trauma and brain haemorrhaging, and later developed aerophobia, a fear of flying. More than two decades later, on 12 June 2025, Air India Flight AI171 crashed shortly after takeoff from Ahmedabad, killing 241 people. The sole survivor, Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, was also seated in 11A — a window seat near an emergency exit. Despite multiple injuries, he was able to walk away from the wreckage. The coincidence has drawn global attention and sparked debate online, with some calling it a miracle and others noting the statistical anomaly. While seat 11A is located near the emergency exit on many aircraft, aviation experts caution that no seat guarantees survival in a crash. The two incidents occurred in different decades, countries, under different circumstances, and involved different aircraft. Yet, the shared detail has fuelled speculation and fascination, highlighting the unpredictable nature of air travel and survival.
Times
08-06-2025
- Business
- Times
My husband and Mike Lynch were colleagues. They died 42 hours apart
Karen Chamberlain was sitting on a bus on her way to see her dying husband in hospital when she got a text message telling her the Bayesian yacht had sunk. It was August 19 last year and the British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, 59, and six others, including his daughter Hannah, 18, had been killed after a freak storm sank the family's luxury vessel off Sicily. Only two days earlier, Karen's husband, Steve, 52, had been hit by a car while out on a 17-mile run. His head injuries were unsurvivable. The timing of the two men's deaths was an extraordinary coincidence. Chamberlain and Lynch had been co-defendants in a US fraud trial over the $11.7 billion (£8.6 billion) sale of the tycoon's software firm Autonomy to Hewlett Packard in 2011. If convicted, Lynch would have faced more than 20 years in an American prison; Chamberlain would have faced a shorter sentence. Both had been acquitted in June. Ten weeks later, they were both struck by freak accidents 1,700 miles apart. Only 42 hours or so separated the two tragedies. In her first newspaper interview, Karen, 55, said: 'If anyone had made a movie about it they'd have gone, 'Well that's the most ridiculous ending', but unfortunately it's what it was, just a horrible, horrible coincidence.' She said: 'I got a text on my phone from a friend that knew the family … they said, 'I'm really sorry to have to tell you but Bayesian has sunk and Hannah and Mike are missing'. I just couldn't believe it. When I got off the bus, I called and said, 'What on earth is going on?' and they said, 'There was a storm and the boat sunk'. 'It was just absolutely horrendous … You're devastated for Steve, you're then devastated for them and everybody else. It's almost just unbelievable. I couldn't process it really.' The Chamberlains, who had one month earlier celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, were friends with Lynch and his wife, Angela Bacares, who survived the disaster, and had been guests on their 'incredible' yacht. Karen had also been on the Bayesian with Bacares on one occasion when Lynch was not allowed to leave the UK as he awaited extradition to the US. The news of Steve Chamberlain's accident had reached Lynch and his guests on the Bayesian. Karen had received condolence messages from Bacares and Judy Bloomer, the wife of Jonathan Bloomer, the former chairman of Autonomy's audit committee, before it sank. The Bloomers both died on the boat. Last week, the inquest took place in Alconbury Weald, Cambridgeshire, into Chamberlain's death. The coroner ruled it was the result of a road traffic collision. He had been six miles into a run from Ely back to Longstanton, Cambridgeshire, where the family live, when he was hit by a Vauxhall Corsa driven by a woman, 49, who was on her way to go shopping in Newmarket, Suffolk. Chamberlain, who was Lynch's chief financial officer, had been crossing the road between two parts of a bridleway when he was struck by the car, which had just crested a humpback bridge. The car was driving within the 60mph speed limit, the inquest was told. He was thrown 15ft in the air, a witness said. The coroner said: 'In his [the witness's] opinion, the driver wouldn't have seen anything until she was on top of the rise [of the bridge] and wouldn't have had a chance to stop.' The coroner shared the family's concerns that the humpback bridge was an 'irredeemable barrier' to visibility for pedestrians and other road users, and is writing to Cambridgeshire county council about it before deciding whether a report to help prevent future deaths on the road is necessary. Karen wants the 'terrible position' of the footpath crossing moved and the speed limit lowered to 40mph. Chamberlain had not always been a runner. Karen said he had taken up the sport initially to raise money for charity after her father, Stan Tokley, who had Parkinson's and dementia, died in 2019 at the age of 77. Chamberlain realised it helped him deal with the stress of being investigated after he was charged with fraud in the same year that his father-in-law died. Karen said: 'The moment he went out there running he would de-stress. That's when he did the most of his thinking about the trial. It was brilliant. It not only kept him calm but also helped him process stuff.' The running quickly escalated. He ran hundreds of miles, competing in ultra-distance races in Snowdonia, the Peak District and the Lake District and spending hours meticulously planning his routes. Karen said: 'He loved the mountains, trails and just working routes out. Steve would never do anything recklessly ever. He listened to podcasts because that helped him and always wore one earbud — but never wore both — so he could always hear his surrounding area.' On the day of the run, he had, as usual, only taken one earbud. The timing of the two men's deaths was not the only bizarre coincidence, Karen said. The night before, the couple had had a barbecue at home with their daughter, Ella, 24, and her partner who were visiting for the weekend. The subject of death came up. 'We just had a really lovely evening, sat in the garden. It was really warm, just reminiscing, laughing and it was the oddest thing,' Karen recalled. 'Ella said something about inheritance. I can't remember what the comment was and Steve says, 'You'll have a long time to wait for that because I'm not going anywhere soon', and then we got into this conversation about dying.' Karen told the family that her will said she wanted to be buried in woodland but she had changed her mind and now wanted to be cremated. 'Steve then said, 'Actually I'm the same, I don't want to be buried now either, I'll be cremated'. And then I'd said, 'I bet you want some of your ashes scattered on the mountains of Wales'. And he went, 'Yeah that's what I want'.' Some of his ashes will be scattered by his son, Teddy, 21, who is going to take part in the last running race that Chamberlain entered before his death, the Snowdon SkyRace, on June 21. It would have been Chamberlain's 53rd birthday. For Karen, who works in risk management, there is a terrible cruelty to have nearly lost a husband to a prison sentence in America, got him back briefly, only to lose him so soon afterwards. The case had dominated their life for a decade, from the investigation beginning in 2014 to the trial finally ending in June. After he was charged in 2019, Chamberlain was endlessly flying back and forth to the US. They had so much time to catch up on, both as a couple and as a family. 'The first thing he said, especially with the kids, he said, 'Right, we've got to make memories'. We were all going to the Latitude festival [in Suffolk] so we got six tickets [one for each of the family, as well as their children's partners]. We booked a holiday — just me and Steve — to go to Greece. We had lots and lots of plans.' The family will still be going to the Latitude festival next month 'to celebrate him', Karen said. The stress of the three-month trial — and the length and cost of the whole excruciating legal process — put enormous strain on the family. Chamberlain's father, Grenville, 74, who lives 15 minutes away from his daughter-in-law in the Cambridgeshire countryside, described the elation when his son and Lynch were found not guilty. He said: 'After a dozen years of hell, it was an incredible relief.' The couple had only been back together in the UK for less than three months before tragedy struck. On the morning of the accident, he got up early at 7.30am to go running, while she was asleep in bed. 'He left really early. So [my final words] were almost, 'Enjoy your run' kind of thing. You don't expect it to be your last words, do you? It's funny. You try and replay that. Where it's just a normal morning, normal memory, and then if only you'd known that was the last conversation because I was probably still asleep. It was probably just a grunt.' When two police officers came to her house, she initially thought they were coming to discuss their postbox, which had been stolen a few days before. 'I said, 'Are you here because of the postbox?' and they just said, 'No. Are you Mrs Chamberlain, Steve Chamberlain's wife?' Your world falls apart, doesn't it?' Chamberlain's life support machine was switched off in the early hours of August 20 to allow time for the donation of his organs to be organised. His liver and kidneys were donated to three men. 'He'd have donated all his body if he'd had the opportunity. It was lovely. He's managed to save three people.'
