Improbable yet True Events or Black Swans

[ramones1986]

- A law student that has been accused of murdering his father's rival became the topnotcher in the bar examinations, served in the military, became a senator then President for 20 years. His legacy remained mixed until today.

- A housewife became well-known after the assassination of her husband in the tarmac, becoming the nation's first female president of the Philippines less than three years later.

- A Lincolnshire-born research chemist became Britain's first female prime minister, defining an era, characterized by sudden change in British life, named after her.

 

[Emperor Julian]

It's pretty likely, from what little I've read, that Obama would have won anyway, but that fiasco certainly didn't hurt his chances or his exposure on a national level. And then, a mere four years later, he'd gone from "Senator Who?" to the first African-American president.

I heard that since made an Obama landslide inevitable, it allowed Obama to go around campaigning for other Democrats and send Democrat money to other races, which gave him a lot of goodwill and connections among other office holders.

 

[Hnau]

Lenin single-handedly turned the Bolsheviks against the idea of a coalition socialist government after he arrived in Russia in April 1917. Instead he pushed them to launch a coup d'etat, and they actually won the entire country. That's a Black Swan event for sure.

Cortes taking Tenochtitlan during his first expedition to Mesoamerica was a Black Swan event. Maybe one in twenty conquistadors could have figured out how to do that. Maybe one in ten of them could have actually executed a successful strategy. The Aztec capital should not have fallen in 1521.

Pizarro taking the Inca hostage and afterwards ravaging the Incan Empire was also a Black Swan event. Cortes was the only other conquistador I know of that would have been as ballsy. Pizarro also arrived in the area at the perfect time. One or two years later and they would have been doomed to fight against a powerful empire already recovering from the first wave of European diseases.

 

[Driftless]

- A housewife became well-known after the assassination of her husband in the tarmac, becoming the nation's first female president of the Philippines less than three years later.

And peacefully ousting a long entrenched and well connected autocrat in the process.

 

[ramones1986]

And peacefully ousting a long entrenched and well connected autocrat in the process.

Exactly, and that autocrat is what I've posted first.

 

[Hairog]

Very good ideas. Remember though ... after 1950.

 

[KB1122]

A Hollywood actor gives a speech at the end of losing presidential campaign. Two years later becomes governor of California. Sixteen years later president.

 

[KB1122]

Strangely no one thought about this one: A presidential motorcade route takes a slow left turn right underneath a building where works a political radical who has already attempted a political assassination earlier in the year.

 

[DrakonFin]

A poor former Russian province fights a bloody civil war where roughly 1% of the prewar population is killed in the time span of just few months, still becomes the only post-Versailles state aside from Czechoslovakia to retain wide-ranging democracy. Then, 21 years after the Civil War, the same country manages to withstand the onslaught of the Red Army - twice - and promptly continues independent existence at the border of Soviet Union without being occupied or outright Sovietized through the Cold War.

And later from this capital-strapped small country with a recently very closed economy, a internationally speaking obscure little company originally producing rubber boots and car tires rises in a short time as as a global giant in a cutting edge technological field, to become the world leader in mobile telecommunications at one time estimated to be worth 203 billion euros.

 

[Johannes Parisiensis]

1. A major French politician, favored for becoming the presidentian candidate for his party, is bought down after a sexual scandal totally non-obvious for an uninitiated

And later from this capital-strapped small country with a recently very closed economy, a internationally speaking obscure little company originally producing rubber boots and car tires rises in a short time as as a global giant in a cutting edge technological field, to become the world leader in mobile telecommunications at one time estimated to be worth 203 billion euros.

Before being integrated in another company.

1. A playing cards making company created in 1889 in a then-develloping country became a leader in the video games sector

 

[Saphroneth]

1. A major French politician, favored for becoming the presidentian candidate for his party, is bought down after a sexual scandal totally non-obvious for an uninitiated

"A French politician is brought down in a sex scandal" is kind of one on its own...


What about:

"Boris Johnson is the Mayor of London."

 

[Hairog]

"A French politician is brought down in a sex scandal" is kind of one on its own...


What about:

"Boris Johnson is the Mayor of London."

Ha! Good one.

 

[Hairog]

More, more! I'm greedy.