1931: Discovering 'serendipity' Mar 29, 2020

Ironically 'serendipity', or at least with its current definition, is an invented word, coined in 1754 by Horace Walpole. However, the word did exist in English in some form or another for a long time beforehand, and Walpole used the word to describe the feeling of finding a lost painting by referring to the Persian fairy-tale "The Three Princes of Serendip". 'Serendip' is just an older name of what is now Sri Lanka, though many other languages adopted this Persian name to mean exclusively "a chance discovery".

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