On 15 July 2011, two television towers in the Netherlands caught fire. One collapsed spectacularly. There had never been a fire in a television tower in the Netherlands. These television towers had been there for over fifty years. And there were only twenty-four of them. A few people speculated about these incidents having a common cause.¹ The towers are in different areas, making a common cause unlikely unless there is intent. After all, what is the chance of two aeroplanes crashing into both towers of the World Trade Center in New York on the same day? Only there was no evidence suggesting intent or a common cause. That makes it very mysterious.

Consider this coincidence from Bermuda, which is near the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. In 1975, a 17-year-old boy had a deadly accident while riding his moped. He died exactly a year after his 17-year-old brother died in an accident while riding the same moped in the same intersection and collided with the same taxi with the same driver, carrying the same passenger. Repeating patterns may have contributed to the incident. Perhaps it was a dangerous point where accidents frequently occurred. The passenger may have visited Bermuda once a year and taken a taxi from the airport to the same destination each time.

In 1992, I was bicycling in Groningen, where I lived at the time. On the way, a car door suddenly opened just before me. I could barely avoid a collision. About ten minutes later, on the same trip, it happened again with another car on another road. Never before or after this trip had a car door opened in front of me, even though I had made bicycle trips nearly every day for several decades. It is odd. But what are the odds?

Those incidents might be random events. Many things happen all the time, so bizarre accidents occur by chance. It doesn’t require a Supreme Puppet Master to make them happen. It may be hard to calculate the probability of an event like two television towers catching fire in one country in one day, but it is very low. Only, the number of possible strange incidents is very high.

But how low and how high? That matters tremendously. If there are a million possible events, and the chance of one happening on any given day is one in a million, we should not be surprised when one does. On average, an event like that should happen every day. If it is one in a trillion, and such an event occurs quite frequently, we are on to something, because, on average, it should happen once every million days.

The number of possible strange coincidences is infinite, so it shouldn’t surprise us that simple coincidences, such as a car door opening in front of me twice on a single bicycle trip, happen from time to time. It is, however, odd that it happened twice on one trip and never on any other. Coincidences come in different types. The more intricate a coincidence is, the less likely it is to occur. Indeed, some complicated coincidences are far less likely to occur than two car doors opening on one bicycle trip.

The following falls in the latter category. Once, I entered a do-it-yourself store. There was a couch near the entrance. The price tag of € 389 caught my attention. As a student, I lived in dormitory 389 on the campus. Price tags often end with a nine, so there was nothing suspicious about it, I concluded. Strange things had happened, so I tried to convince myself that it was not unusual. I realised it would be far more curious to find a price tag of € 401, as I had also lived in building 401, and price tags rarely end in a 1.

A few seconds later, I ran into a pile of bags of potting soil. These bags had a conspicuous lettering ’40l’, indicating they contained 40 litres of potting soil. That was close enough to 401 to be intriguing. There were no other types of bags on the spot. Potting soil is available in 10, 20, 25, 40, and 50-litre sizes. Sacks of 40 litres also come with markings such as ’40L’ and ’40 litres’. Hence, the ’40l’ was indeed remarkable.

Two years later, I returned to the same store. These bags of potting soil, marked ’40l’, stood conspicuously stacked near the entrance, reminding me of the previous incident. There was no couch, and I did not see a € 389 price tag there. I contemplated this while fetching the item I planned to buy. Its price tag was €3.89, and I had gone to the store to purchase that one item.

That is far less likely to happen than two car doors opening before me on the same bicycle trip. The events interacted with my thoughts, and the sequel made it even more improbable. The car doors opening could be a coincidence, but the do-it-yourself store incident should boggle the mind, provided one is allowed to think. In one of those dormitories, I met a most peculiar Lady. Since then, a series of noteworthy coincidences have transpired, reminding me of that. This coincidence thus also fits into this scheme, further heightening its peculiarity.

To make the coincidence happen, the bags of potting soil had to be in place, so I would run into them just after thinking of 401. And later, I had to go there to buy an item for € 3.89. And it goes much further than that. The scheme encompasses the item having a price tag of € 3.89, and my having lived in dormitories 389 and 401. That is most peculiar indeed. So much can go wrong. Imagine the bags’ content being 50 litres, the lettering being different, or me visiting another do-it-yourself store or buying another item the second time, and the scheme would fall apart. Perhaps it is a mere coincidence, but it is less likely than two car doors opening in front of me during the same bicycle trip.

On the evening of 11 October 2025, my wife and I watched episode ‘Demon 79’ of the Netflix series Black Mirror. The story played in Great Britain in 1979. It turned out that the murder of two people by a psychotic shoe saleswoman, following orders of a demon disguised as Boney M band member Bobby Farrell, proved insufficient to ward off the apocalypse. The apocalypse proved to be a nuclear war. After watching it, I went to bed. The next morning, I first read the news headlines on the teletext page 101 of the Dutch public television, and found out that two people had died at age 79, actress Diane Keaton and singer Joost Nuissl. So, two people died, thus not enough to ward off nuclear war. Two days later, on 14 October 2025, a NATO exercise named Steadfast Noon began. It included dropping fake atomic bombs above the area where I live. ‘You can sleep peacefully,’ a NATO spokesman added.

Latest revision: 14 October 2025

Featured image: Number 381 dormitory. University Of Twente (2013). [copyright info]

1. Onderzoek: Hoe konden twee zendmasten vandaag in brand vliegen? Algemeen Dagblad (15-07-2011). [link]