rancis Huntrodds and his wife Mary died
within five hours of one another on their 80th
birthday – their joint 80th birthday. They
were both born on 19 September 1600, and both died
on 19 September 1680. For completeness, they got
married on 19 September too.
So 19 September should surely be Huntrodds’ Day,
a national celebration of chance and coincidence, says
Cambridge University’s Winton Professor of the
Public Understanding of Risk, Sir David
Spiegelhalter. While on holiday in Whitby, he
stumbled across a monument to the number-defying
couple. The chances of these events taking place are
astronomically unlikely; Spiegelhalter’s curiosity as a
statistician was piqued.
Here we take a look at how the power of maths can
shed light on the remarkable coincidences that
shaped the lives of the Huntrodds.The curious case of a married couple who died on the same day
they were born is a window into the strange world of chance and
coincidence, as Timandra Harkness reveals
F