Jessie J didn’t know what she was getting into. Source: Channel 9

The Voice mentor’s date of birth fitted into a mysterious pattern of significance attached to this day that had scientists baffled.

March 27 has seen far more births and deaths of famous people than any other time of the year, according to Wikipedia. The online encyclopaedia lists 821 noteworthy births and 432 deaths on March 27, dramatically more than runner-up, March 4, which records 638 important births and 252 deaths — itself a spike in both areas.

Jessie J, who recently turned 27, shares the March 27 birthday with a host of other pop stars, from Mariah Carey to Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas to blues legend Mighty Joe Young.

Also entering the world on this day were Quentin Tarantino, British prime minister James Callaghan, X-ray inventor Wilhelm Röntgen and The Fugitive star David Janssen.

As for deaths, there was Hollywood director Billy Wilder, comedy star Dudley Moore, English rocker Ian Drury, Dutch illustrator MC Escher, first man in space Yuri Gagarin, and King James I.

His leading lady Gloria Swanson was born on March 27, 1899. Source: News Corp Australia

Director Billy Wilder died on March 27, 2002. Source: AAP

Vocativ consulted 12 scholars — historians, demographers, theologians — to try to decipher the bizarre trend. Most thought it was “too weird to be true”, others hinted at the metaphysical, and astrologer Susan Miller observed that the date was Aries, “a leadership sign”. No one had a rational explanation for the odd coincidence.

Then came a new twist in the story. Vocativ started looking at Wikipedia itself, and found that date pages are edited manually, so they don’t automatically update when a notable birth or death is recorded on an individual’s page.

It emerged that editors who update Wikipedia pages were often particularly focused on specific dates.

One anonymous user had made 500 edits to March 27 over two-and-a-half years, and another user, Acumen76, had made 17 per cent of all edits to March 4, and none for any other date.

It appeared to be an example of “cognitive bias”, a phenomenon in which we are particularly drawn to a certain date, number or name — either because of a personal connection, or because it just “feels good”.

Dudley Moore died on — you guessed it — March 27, 2002. Source: Supplied

Mariah Carey was born on March 27, 1970. Source: Getty Images

Those users might have been attracted to those dates because they had a birthday on that day. Or the dates might have been staring them in the face for another reason.

Greg Yates, an educational psychology expert from the University of South Australia, says humans will always choose what is “most available to us”.

“The mind does not have access to a random generator,” he told news.com.au. “If you ask someone to generate random numbers, they cannot do it. You automatically have fixed peaks.”

This “availability” means something we are more likely to access than something else.

Ask someone for a day of week, and many will immediately pick Monday or Sunday. “Start, middle and end are very important,” Dr Yates said. “It might be personal to them, the day they start work, or the day they go to church. Things don’t line up randomly.”

Does this solve the mystery of the fateful March 27? Perhaps, but it sets up others in its place.

If Wikipedia editors can skew our impression of reality thanks to their personal bias, what else could be altered by our favouring starts, middles and ends?

Nominative determinism is the science of how the names of people and things influence what they become — think sprinter Usain Bolt, The X-Files producer David Nutter and Barclays CEO Bob Diamond. And numerical determinism can be just as important.

If we struggle with randomness, it means that coincidence often has an explanation. March 27 is indeed fate.