Black+Swan+Events+in+History

Black Swan events in History- Some samples

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 * 1) 9/11 would certainly count. For most Westerners, the planes came out of "clear blue skies".
 * 2) The sub-prime mortgage crisis, the other event, along with 9/11, which bookends the 2000s as the decade of unknown unknowns. This is a good example, because the whole financial crisis was caused by a model that accounted for known unknowns (risk of homeowners defaulting) but missed the unknown unknown (the chance that all the homeowners would default).
 * 3) The arrival of Europeans in the new world was a black swan, at least for the Aztecs. (But maybe not for the Europeans - many scholars predicted that Columbus would hit another continent before reaching Asia).
 * 4) The arrival of Europeans in Easter Island (a black swan for the Easter Islanders). Easter Island's history is such a great story; they'd been separated from the rest of Polynesia for centuries, and had pretty much forgotten the rest of the world existed. There was inter-tribal warfare, the stone heads getting bigger and bigger, until suddenly environmental collapse caused by deforestation leading to mass population reduction. Then a new cult emerging in the post-apocalyptic island. And then, one day, some ship from a highly advanced civilisation appears on the horizon - it must have seemed like aliens touching down on Earth.
 * 5) The sinking of the Titanic - a black swan precisely because it was considered "unsinkable".
 * 6) The fall of the Soviet Union. As mentioned, even a few years before most Soviet watchers predicted the superpower would be around for decades to come.
 * 7) The discovery of an agricultural civilisation in the interior of Papua New Guinea. (This was a black swan for Europeans, who considered the interior of the island to either be unoccupied or only home to "savages").
 * 8) The discovery of actual "black swans" in Australia.

Some more samples

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the Black Death

- World War I

- the popularity of the car

- the success of the personal computer

- Global Warming

- the rise of the Internet