4 iconic people who became famous without even trying
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Fame typically as a result of constant, deliberate, and even painful effort. In some cases, however, a happenstance meeting, a random photo op, or the post-mortem actions of friends become the catalyst launching a celebrity to legendary status. INSIDER found four examples of famous historical figures who owed their big breaks to a stroke of luck.
Shakespeare is a big deal today because his friends published the First Folio after his death.
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As anyone who's ever seen "Shakespeare In Love" can attest, the Bard had a pretty good career going during his lifetime. His own company of players, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, had a residency at the Globe Theater in London, and Will's shows — particularly the comedies — attracted a wide range of audience members, from peasants to noblemen and sometimes even royals.
By the time of his death, however, Shakespeare's star had significantly faded. According to Shakespeare scholar Andrea Mays and historian James L. Swanson, Shakespeare wasn't actively producing new work during the last years of his life, and few of his past works existed in a concrete, publishable form. But after his passing, two of Shakespeare's friends and former collaborators did him an enormous favor ... by completely ignoring his last will and testament.
John Heminges and Henry Condell, both performers in Shakespeare's company and personal friends of the playwright, received sums of money in Shakespeare's will. Shakespeare instructed his friends to use the cash to purchase gold "memorial" rings, but Heminges and Condell had other ideas.
They instead spent their inheritances on a project that would change the literary world forever: compiling Shakespeare's notes, manuscripts, and draft books into an authorized collection of his works. The result? The First Folio, a volume published in 1623 (seven years after Shakespeare's death) which allowed Shakespeare's writings to live on for centuries.
Alfred Nobel's most famous discovery — dynamite — happened by accident.
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His name may be most closely associated with the Peace Prize he founded, but Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel first became famous for creating a less-than-peaceful invention: dynamite. However, this game-changing explosive wasn't the result of deliberate action, but rather a surprising accident.
Nobel spent several years attempting to stabilize nitroglycerin, a liquid compound with explosive properties. After considerable trial and error (resulting in multiple accidental detonations with casualties), Nobel found the solution while transporting nitroglycerin to a new lab facility in the mid-1860s.
One of the cans used to hold the nitroglycerin popped open during transit, and upon opening the cargo area to assess the damage, Nobel realized that the packing material surrounding the cans — a soft but solid compound of sedimentary rock known as kieselguhr — absorbed the liquid nitroglycerin in just the right way to stabilize it. This discovery led to further experimentation, and once Nobel figured out how to merge nitroglycerin and kieselguhr without compromising the former's potency, he had the recipe for dynamite.
As it turns out, Nobel's legacy relied on mistakes more than once. In 1888, Nobel's brother passed away, and a French newspaper erroneously claimed that Alfred Nobel died instead.
In the incorrect obituary they published for Nobel, they dubbed him a "merchant of death" and assigned Nobel blame for the destructive potential of his most famous invention. Deeply upset and ashamed by this reaction to his life's work, Nobel revised his own last will and testament, bequeathing the bulk of his estate to future winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.
John Wayne went from a film-set crew member to a leading man thanks to one friendship.
Trouble Along The Way Trailer via YouTube
The most famous on-screen cowboy in history, John Wayne didn't get his big break by auditioning or slipping his head-shot to agents. Instead, the one-time USC football player had to abandon his dreams of playing in the pros due to an injury. This event caused him to leave school and start looking around Hollywood for odd jobs to help him pay the rent, and Wayne ultimately signed on as a low-level crew member for Fox Studios' props department.
Film studios often used crew members as extras back then, and Wayne managed to get on-camera a few times, largely because of his football-player build. During one such occasion, he became friends with director John Ford, who saw something special in this broad-shouldered and stoic prop runner. Ford helped Wayne by introducing him to other directors (including Raoul Walsh, who gave Wayne his first starring role in "The Big Trail") and eventually cast him in his breakthrough role as The Ringo Kid in "Stagecoach."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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