SERENDIPITY

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.

The word derives from Serendip, coined by Horace Walpole on 28 January 1754 in a letter he wrote to his friend Horace Mann, an Englishman then living in Florence. The letter read,

"It was once when I read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of:"