Famous Decisions Made by Coin Flip

Portland, Oregon: Named by a Coin Flip (1845)

The city of Portland, Oregon takes its name from a coin flip. In 1845, two of the settlement's founders — Asa Lovejoy from Boston, Massachusetts, and Francis Pettygrove from Portland, Maine — each wanted to name the new city after their hometown. They settled the dispute with a coin. Pettygrove won the toss. The city became Portland.

If Lovejoy had won, one of the largest cities in the Pacific Northwest would have been named Boston, Oregon. The coin toss is commemorated with a commemorative penny on display at the Oregon Historical Society. The original coin — reportedly a copper large cent — has never been identified with certainty, though the story of the toss is well-documented in primary sources from both men.

The Wright Brothers: Who Flew First (1903)

Orville and Wilbur Wright settled the question of who would make the first flight attempt at Kitty Hawk on December 14, 1903 with a coin toss. Wilbur won and made the first attempt — which ended in a brief takeoff, a stall, and a minor crash landing. Three days later, on December 17, 1903, Orville won the second coin toss and made history, completing the first successful powered flight.

The coin toss is documented in Orville Wright's diary. It is one of several instances in aviation history where chance determined who would be in the record books. Had the December 14 attempt succeeded, Wilbur Wright — not Orville — would be the named pilot of the first powered flight.

AFL-NFL Merger: Playoff Seeding (1969)

When the American Football League and the National Football League merged in 1970, questions arose about how to schedule the combined league's inaugural season, including the assignment of teams to conferences and divisions. Several scheduling conflicts were resolved by coin tosses between team representatives — a practical solution to disputes that had no obvious neutral alternative.

The coin toss became the standard NFL mechanism for determining home-field advantage in tied standings situations and for determining the order of the league's annual draft when teams have equal records. The Super Bowl coin toss — now a major media event in itself — determines which team receives the opening kickoff.

Fleetwood Mac: A Coin Flip Name (1967)

The band Fleetwood Mac takes its name from a specific circumstance: guitarist Peter Green chose the name to honour drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie (who initially declined to join the band). The name was partly chosen through a process of elimination that, in its final stage, reportedly involved something close to a random decision. The "Mac" from McVie, the "Fleetwood" from Fleetwood — an arrangement that McVie would later benefit from greatly as the band became one of the best-selling acts of the 1970s.

While not strictly a coin flip, the circumstance illustrates how arbitrary naming choices — potentially made with no more deliberation than a coin toss — shape enduring cultural entities.

UEFA and FIFA: Tie-Breaking in Soccer

Before the introduction of penalty shootouts in soccer tournaments, tied knockout matches were frequently decided by coin toss. The 1968 European Championship semifinal between Italy and the Soviet Union ended 0-0 after extra time. Italy advanced to the final on the flip of a coin.

Italy went on to win the championship. The Soviet Union's elimination — by chance — is still remembered in football history as one of the most consequential and controversial applications of random chance in sport. The experience contributed to UEFA's later decision to introduce penalty shootouts as a more "skill-based" tiebreaker — though critics argue that penalty shootouts are also substantially random.

The coin toss remains in use in soccer for determining team sides and kick-off direction at the start of matches and in some lower-level competition tiebreaking scenarios.

Berkshire Hathaway's Name: A Contested History

Warren Buffett has described his acquisition of Berkshire Hathaway — a struggling textile company that became the vehicle for his investment empire — as one of his worst decisions in business terms. The name "Berkshire Hathaway," retained after the acquisition, was never chosen by preference. The circumstances of the company's name being kept, rather than changed to something that reflected its investment nature, involved the kind of pragmatic non-decision that functions much like a coin toss in corporate history.

Buffett himself has joked that if the coin had fallen differently — if he had more aggressively restructured the company rather than maintaining its existing corporate identity — the investment vehicle might have a very different name today.

The Apollo 13 Mission Number

Apollo 13 was not originally mission number 13. The Apollo program's numbering at one point involved shuffling mission plans due to a prior mission's issues. The assignment of the number 13 to the mission that would experience the famous oxygen tank explosion and near-disaster was the product of scheduling and numbering adjustments — not deliberately chosen, and not avoided despite superstitious concerns raised by some at NASA.

The mission launched on April 11, 1970 — at 13:13 Houston time. The oxygen tank ruptured on April 13. The number 13's role in the mission is a remarkable coincidence, not a cause — but it remains the most famous example of the cultural anxiety around random number assignments.

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