the.com/serendipity
the art of finding something better than what you were stupid enough to look for
means the happy accident of stumbling onto something good or useful while you were looking for something else entirely
from Coined by the English writer Horace Walpole in 1754, in a letter, after a Persian fairy tale called 'The Three Princes of Serendip,' whose heroes kept making lucky discoveries by accident and wit. 'Serendip' is an old name for Sri Lanka, ultimately from the Sanskrit 'Simhaladvipa,' roughly 'Dwelling-Place-of-Lions Island.' So the word for fortunate accidents is itself a small accident: a novelist borrowing a bedtime story to name a feeling that had no name.
- coined by
- Horace Walpole in a 1754 letter
- origin tale
- Persian princes of Serendip, ancient name for Sri Lanka
- penicillin
- discovered from a moldy, forgotten petri dish
- hard to translate
- voted one of English's least translatable words
- microwave
- invented after a chocolate bar melted near radar
discovery of penicillin — alexander fleming's accidental observation of mold killing bacteria in 1928
invention of post-it notes — spencer silver's failed adhesive at 3m in 1968 led to the blockbuster product
discovery of x-rays — wilhelm röntgen's unexpected observation of radiation while experimenting with cathode rays in 1895