Fame is contagious. Fame is sometimes accidental too; arising out of
strange events/occurrences that catapult "normal people" to that
"fame" pedestal! These 15 people went viral, unbeknownst to them.
The Mysterious Lady In Red at the London Olympics
She kicked up quite a storm when she mysteriously appeared in 'red and blue' at the London Olympics, beside Sushil Kumar (flag bearer for the event).
Indian officials and media collectively
fumed at the fact that she insulted India on a global forum by
"gate-crashing" it; while later it was confirmed that her name is
Madhura K. Nagendra and she was part of the dance cast for the opening ceremony.
The Success Kid
You might remember this kid from seeing all the
'success' related memes on the Internet. Well, here comes Sammy Griner, a boy
whose mother took this picture of his when he was just 11 months old, in 2007
and posted it on Flickr. Nothing happened for two years, until one day the
photo went 'crazy viral'. The "I hate sandcastles" picture became a
stock photo and had big brands like Virgin Mobile, vying for it.
The Man with the Golden Arm
James Harrison has donated blood more than 1000
times, which is a world record. His act has saved 2.2 million babies, including
his own grandson, from the deadly Rhesus disease. The uniqueness of his blood
has also helped in creating the Anti-D vaccine.
Playboy's naked model's image used to test algorithms in digital image processing!
Lena Soderberg's 1972 Playboy photo became one
of the most widely used standard test images for compression algorithms. This
image had the right balance of colour, detail, focus, shading and reflections,
which made it the perfect fit for algorithms.
The "Immortal" woman
Henrietta Lacks died at the age of 31 after she developed cervical cancer. While she was alive, cells from her cervix (both healthy and cancerous) were given to researcher George Otto Gey at John Hopkins University (where she was undergoing treatment), without her knowledge. George found that her cells behaved differently from any other cells he'd ever seen. From her healthy cells, he could create the first "immortal" human cells named HeLa (after her name). They were termed immortal because they lived longer than normal cells.
The Mars Mohawk Guy
Bobak Ferdowsi became quite a sensation during
the August 6, 2012 landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars; as he wore an
unusual mohawk style, seen on NASA TV's live broadcast of the event. The
stylish Flight Director's hairstyle was also acknowledged by President Obama.
The man who was too handsome for Saudi Arabia
In 2013, Omar Borkan Al Gala, an
actor/photographer/poet from Dubai, along with two other men were thrown out of
Riyadh's annual Janadriyah Festival by Religious Police for being 'ridiculously
handsome'. It was later found out that that wasn't the reason why Al Gala was
chucked out. He was booked for dancing inappropriately at a wedding.
The girl with the kickass resume for AirBnb
Nina Mufleh sent a resume
to AirBnb that went so viral, it received numerous retweets!
The 'Cricket' Woman
Ashley Kerekes, an American woman, became a Twitter sensation for her handle name: "The Ashes", which is the famous cricket series between England and Australia. She got a lot of followers overnight and was bombarded by tweets and cricket-related messages, to the extent that she started following the sport.
And last, but not least..... an honorary
shout-out to Mr KRK, the man who became an overnight Twitter sensation, despite
just starring in just 2 films.
