r/AskHistorians • u/caffarelli Moderator | Eunuchs and Castrati | Opera • Oct 22 '13
Feature Tuesday Trivia | Heads-or-Tails Decisions: Truly Random Moments in History
Previous weeks’ Tuesday Trivias.
Today’s trivia theme comes to us from /u/t33po! And it’s a bit of a tough one:
Coin flip decisions. Broadly speaking, critical and/or influential decisions that were made randomly or off-hand. This is not random coincidences or flukes but moments when it was known to be a difficult situation and the actors let it be decided randomly
So if you’ve got any moment in history where random chance was deliberately used to make a decision with an interesting outcome, please share.
Next week on Tuesday Trivia: OoooOOOoooh! (this is a ghost noise) Next Tuesday is our closest Trivia day to Halloween, and I think we should all creep each other out with some ghost stories. So get together your best historical hauntings for next week’s thread!
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Oct 22 '13
Apparently Portland, Oregon received its name due to a coin toss. Two pioneers in the 1800s, Asa Lovejoy and Francis Pettygrove couldn't decide on a name on a plot of land they were settling. Lovejoy wanted to name it after his hometown of Boston, and Pettygrove wanted to name after his hometown of Portland. Pettygrove won the coin toss, and the coin they used is on display at the Oregon Historical Society Museum. They call it the Portland Penny.
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u/atomfullerene Oct 22 '13
Two Portlands are confusing enough, two Bostons would be awful!
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Oct 22 '13
I heard an excellent one in a cultural history seminar last year from the postgrad in charge. During US action in the Balkans (I believe) in the 90s, one particularly Christian general was considering whether or not to run a risky operation. He was leaning towards no, but then suddenly saw the face of Jesus in his map, and decided it was a sign to go ahead. The wider consequences of the decision are immaterial, but it definitely asks some really interesting questions about what we consider a genuine historical cause (EH Carr's smoker hit by a car comes to mind).
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u/thrasumachos Oct 23 '13
One interesting one:
The Romans consulted omens before they went into battle. Often, these omens were in the form of the movement of birds, analyzing the liver of sacrificed animals, etc. If the omens were good, you could attack; if not, you couldn't. Before the battle of Drepana in the Second Punic War, the Roman general, P. Clodius Pulcher, kept consulting the omens, and the sacred chickens refused to eat their grain. He got fed up, and said "if they will not eat, then let them drink," and threw them off the boat. The Romans lost that battle. (this is sort of a different one, since it's one of the rare times Romans didn't leave things to chance, and ignored the omens; however, it has been argued that the haruspices simply said what generals wanted to hear).
Another instance of leaving things up to chance was Nicias' refusal to leave the siege of Syracuse during the Sicilian Expedition. The day he was planning on leaving, there was a lunar eclipse, which the Greeks considered a bad omen. So, he consulted with the priests, and they recommended staying another month. He did. The Syracusans attacked the Athenian fleet, defeated it, blockaded the Athenians in the port, and ended up butchering many of the Athenian soldiers while holding others captive in quarries. As a result of this, the Athenian army was weakened, and Athens lost the Peloponnesian War.
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u/mskyring Oct 23 '13
Couldn't decisions made upon the basis of omens, auspices, augury etc be considered essentially random?
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Oct 23 '13
1st you'd have to show the decision was made on the basis of an omen, etc
in addition, you'd have to show the selection of the particular omen ,and its meaning, were random ( throwing chickens some grain, and then always interpreting the chickens eating that grain as a positive/negative ,cant be considered random, because chickens eating grain isnt a random occurance )
if the augur or oracle is human, then generally no ( although there could be exceptions )
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u/caffarelli Moderator | Eunuchs and Castrati | Opera Oct 22 '13
When I was thinking about this theme last night I could only come up with one, which is the death of early rock and roll star Richie Valens (La Bamba, Donna, etc) on "The Day the Music Died," which was the 1959 Plane crash that killed him as well as Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and the pilot.
There was one seat left on the flight, and Frankie Valens and Tommy Allsup (country music singer) flipped for it. Frankie Valens won the coin toss, so he got a ride on the charter plane, and Allsup had to take a bus. So a coin toss ended one life and saved another. Perhaps not as critical as some decisions, but still something to think about.