Example sentences of "happened [prep] be a [noun] " in BNC.

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1 Boulton happened to be a creditor of Roebuck and to cover the debt he agreed to take Roebuck 's two-thirds share of Watt 's patent .
2 And she happened to be a Christian .
3 The station commander , who just happened to be a bit of an oppo of mine called " Bull " Jarmen — a great monster of a fellow and a Kiwi to boot — who was heard to say : " Well , it was very convenient him leaving it there ; you did not have to travel very far to collect it or find out what happened to the undercarriage . "
4 Unknown to him , the stump on which he was standing happened to be a car-parts plant owned by Italians .
5 It was by chance and with the support of a visiting teacher of drawing who also happened to be a lecturer at Goldsmiths College that I succeeded in getting a place at art school , the first and last totally blind student to have ever done so in Britain .
6 The church had been chosen simply because its priest happened to be a friend of Eliot 's solicitor , who was also " best man " .
7 Unfortunately she made a mistake of naming the church where Jesus was found as St George 's , which happened to be a Church of England edifice .
8 It happened to be a goods ' entrance , and as she pushed open the heavy doors and slipped inside the deafening noise hit her — of hammering and drilling and the drone of the hydraulic pumps that operated the floor levels together with the shouts of the men operating the overhead cranes .
9 ‘ Unless they happened to be a part of it . ’
10 Unfortunately , PC Dickens happened to be a writer too .
11 We took a book from a shelf , which happened to be a gardening book .
12 If tha does n't believe me , ger a bag of coil on thi back and I 'll get one on mine [ not something unusual for Amos who happened to be a coalmerchant ] and ah 'll race thee to t ’ top o' t' wood ! ’
13 We would n't have got on to it except it happened to be a post office where the little old lady is careful and takes a note of the numbers of anything over a fiver .
14 ‘ And imagine what it must have been like before all those modern office ‘ towers ’ were built to dwarf it — especially if you happened to be a traitor .
15 ‘ This evening happened to be a mixing of some particularly important business with just a little pleasure .
16 To get the tickets you had to sign up for a complete tour and hospitality package , available through Travelforce , a travel agency in Durban — of which the then President of the Natal Rugby Union , and member of the Executive of the ( former ) SARB , just happened to be a director .
17 Almost certainly the right forefinger , unless Gerry Boden happened to be a southpaw .
18 ‘ The whole thing has got out of control , I 'm not so much bored as miserable , ’ confided Diana to a sympathetic neighbour who just happened to be a journalist .
19 And Robert , who was by now learning the basic rule that if anybody said anything interesting it was probably Muhammad , would ask if by any chance it just happened to be a saying of the Prophet , to which the headmaster would reply , his eyes shining , ‘ That 's it !
20 Well , yeah , I spoke to them like , on the telephone , erm and basically they er and we agreed that we would n't take it any further so it er happened to be a police officer 's view as against our view , and whilst we did n't agree with the view , er we sent enough references to make our point known anyway .
21 So a Primary school headmaster , for instance , could find his school offering movement experience to children who had female teachers to the neglect of those children who were unfortunate enough to have a man as their teacher , and similarly , Movement and Drama appeared as a subject on the time-table in our Secondary schools where there happened to be a woman in the P.E .
22 Are they there for some special purpose or just because there happened to be a nail on the wall for them to hang on ?
23 When he was a child , an artist visited his school — he happened to be a musician — and left behind him an impression of a man very clearly committed to his chosen subject , and a feeling of passion for doing something you really want to do , that stayed with Paul for years until he finally decided to become a photographer .
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