How many roads must a man (or a woman) walk down, before finding anything as unexpected as Bob Dylan's winning the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday morning?
Absolutely no offense intended to the Poet Laureate of the Guitar String, mind you. But recently, we’ve all become so accustomed to the prize going to some obscure or out-of-print novelist from a countrywe haven’t thought about since eighth grade geography class
(What’s next, many jokesters wondered on Twitter, a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Keith Richards?)
Which got us to wondering … is Dylan's award the biggest upset win in the history of, well, anything? The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind. But here are five contenders that at least merit some serious consideration:
America defeats England in the Revolutionary War. Think about it: Thirteen undermanned, outgunned and – thanks to the Boston Tea Party – seriously caffeine-deprived colonies taking on the entire might of the British Empire. That's like the New England Patriots playing a Pop Warner team of 8-year-olds in the Super Bowl – and getting spotted three touchdowns to boot. Yet faster than you can say "Paul Revere's ride," the British were going, going, gone, their defeat so massive and unexpected, they've never dared take on the U.S. on in football again (and no, soccer doesn't count).
Atlanta beats out Athens, Greece, to become 1996 Summer Olympics host. Forget all of the sour grapes criticism (we're looking at you, Canada) of our Games' transportation woes, tacky souvenir zone and, of course, Izzy. Haters gonna hate, amiright? Besides, that all happened much later, after Atlanta had snatched the all-important Centennial Olympic Games right out from underneath beyond-prohibitive favorite Athens, Greece's, nose. How prohibitive? Well, the Ancient Olympics had originated in Greece, and the first of the so-called "Modern" Olympics had taken place in Athens in 1896. An epic victory for the Birthplace of Aristotle was considered a foregone conclusion. But then along came Bubba's Backyard, heh, heh.
Jesse Ventura surprise pins Establishment to become governor of Minnesota. It wasn't only the fact that Ventura won as a third-party candidate over Republican (and future U.S. Senator) Norm Coleman and Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey III, the son of a former vice president of the United States. Ventura was better known as "The Body," his nickname during the dozen years he'd previously spent as a WWE pro wrestler.His win was considered the biggest upset in modern American electoral history – that is, at least until "The Hair," aka non-politician Donald Trump, came along to claim the Republican presidential nomination this year.
Michael Corleone becomes the unlikeliest Godfather ever. OK, so the totally hapless and helpless Fredo was even less likely among the three Corleone sons to succeed their father, Vito, as head of the family crime empire. All along, though, the title was supposed to pass to the Don's first-born child, Sonny, thereby freeing up the squeaky clean Michael to enroll at Dartmouth, become a war hero and maybe come home for the occasional family wedding. But then Sonny gets assassinated at a toll booth, Vito drops dead and, well, somebody's gotta murder all the other New York Mafia heads and sister Connie's abusive husband on the same day, right? Somebody other than Fredo, that is.
Esperanza Spalding win Best New Artist Grammy in 2011. Over Justin Bieber and Drake! As a "new" artist, when the jazz cellist (yes, really) had actually released her first album five years earlier! (Almost as bad, as upsets go, was the 1985 Album of the Year Grammy win by Lionel Richie. Nothing wrong with his multimillion-selling "Can't Slow Down" … until you realize it was up against "Purple Rain" by Prince and Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.") At least now we're all prepared for the day sometime in the near future when we wake up to the news that Spalding's won the Nobel Prize in Literature … over Springsteen and Bieber.
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