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In January 1754, the English writer Horace Walpole told a friend in a letter that he had just made a small discovery by sheer chance. Since no word existed for that, he built one: 'serendipity'.
He took it from a tale he loved, 'The Three Princes of Serendip'. Serendip was the old name for Ceylon — modern Sri Lanka — and its princes travelled around endlessly discovering, by accident and by sagacity, things they were not looking for.
The word dozed inside that letter for generations and woke up in the twentieth century, when science realised it needed it: penicillin, X-rays and the microwave oven are textbook serendipities.
Spanish took even longer to let it in: the Royal Spanish Academy did not admit 'serendipia' until 2014. An Oriental tale, a private letter and a 260-year journey to name the kind of luck that only finds those who are looking.