It is hard to imagine Bill Gates logging in to enjoy spending a tiny fraction of his vast wealth playing one of the many best online bingo games available; but for some of the most innovative visionaries in human history, the element of risk has played a key role in their achievements and eventual success. Listed below are five such people who were happy to roll the dice and risk it all to achieve their unmitigated success.
1. Charles Darwin
Darwin faced potential ridicule, public humiliation and the wrath of both powerful religious figures and the monarchy when he first published his theory of natural selection in 1859. His book On the Origin of Species was, instead, an unprecedented success, quickly selling out of all its volumes within days of being made available for sale.
More impressively, Darwin’s theories have provided the bedrock for almost all scientific enquiries on the subject of evolution since. Far from being discredited, Darwin’s theories have now come to form the clear, accepted basis of evolution.
2. Galileo
When Galileo first heard of the work of Nicolas Copernicus, it shattered his illusions of the universe as he and society understood it. At the turn of the 17th Century, the all-powerful leaders of mankind regarded the Earth at the centre of the universe and any other belief was a form of heresy.
Through his tireless observations, Galileo postulated that Copernicus’ belief that the sun was at the centre of the universe and that we travelled around it, may be right. When he decided to take the gamble to make his beliefs public, he was met with bitter and frightening opposition. Later when he defended his work, he was suspected once again of heresy and spent his final days under house arrest.
3. Charles Lindbergh
When French-born hotelier Raymond Orteig announced he would fund a $25,000 prize for the first non-stop flight between New York and Paris in 1919, six famous aviators lost their lives in the next few years in the first attempts to win the Orteig Prize.
In 1927, Charles Lindbergh decided to attempt to win the prize. With his heavily laden plane, the Spirit of St Louis, he left Roosevelt Field, New York and flew non-stop, skimming cloud tops to avoid thunderstorms, through fog and at times flying as low as 10 ft above the water, before landing at Le Bourget Airport, Paris 33 and a half hours later.
4. Dr. Christiaan Barnard
There is no greater gamble than one that involves the sanctity of life, so when Dr Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant in December 1967, the risks could not have been greater.
The patient, a man of 54, successfully underwent the operation and through refining of the processes, similar operations have been performed thousands of times over the years, saving the lives of many thousands people across the globe.
5. Bill Gates
The world of online bingo promotions, email, social networking sites, internet shopping, chat rooms and indeed the basis of many businesses as we know it, would have been very different had one student decided not to take a calculated gamble and follow his interest in computer programming, but instead remain studying at Harvard.
That student was Bill Gates and over the next 30 years, his software company Microsoft would revolutionise the way people live their lives, work and interact, creating a legacy that is still very much in evidence to this day.
To conclude, are many of the world’s innovators naturally gamblers? On the back of tireless endeavour, undeniable genius and rigorous scientific enquiry, there is little doubt that the world’s greatest innovators were willing to take a calculated gamble on their talent and it is fortunate for all of us that they did, as without their efforts, the world would be a very different place.