Justin Bieber
I grew up in Des Moines. Carlisle is a bedroom community, and this family certainly didn’t set out to make any kind of worldwide headlines when they learned they could not conceive without using fertility drugs.
The public’s hatred for this family exceeds that of the Octomom, who DID set out to something like that, even though she can’t take care of any of her kids, and I can’t figure out why. 
I don’t think they have to be alive. I think the key distinction I was making is that whatever the person did, or whatever happened to the person, that led to their fame; is something where, when they woke up that morning, and planned what they were going to be doing that day, had you said to them “hey, something you are doing is going to make you very famous someday”, they wouldn’t have any idea what it was. So, if Anne Frank was writing her diary with the idea that it might be a good book, trying to give it literary merit and quality, that makes her a much less clear candidate than if she was writing what she thought was just a totally normal private diary.
Emily Dickinson may not have intended her poems to be published, but presumably she realized that most people didn’t write poetry the way she did. If you had said to her “you’re going to be famous some day”, she probably would have been able to predict that that would be due to her poetry, not, say, her fashion sense. Whereas if you’d said to Abraham Zapruder on the morning of Nov 22 1963 that he was going to be famous some day, he would have had absolutely no idea why.
The only names I can think of are Lazarus and Stella Liebeck.
Rosa Parks
The Dion quintuplets
Doesn’t remotely fit this category
I dunno. I’d argue that while the accident of their birth was clearly just an accident, they certainly didn’t shun the spotlight. Compare them to Abby and Brittany Hensel (conjoined twins, one body two heads), who, while fairly well known, generally (as I understand it) go about their every-day life outside the spotlight.
Appearing on American Idol is pretty much the definition of fame seeking. Perhaps he didn’t get famous in the way he hoped, but you could say the same thing about Hitler, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck or Ryan Leaf.
John Bobbit, of course.
Care to elaborate as to why Rosa Parks didn’t become accidentally famous for refusing to give up her seat?
Are we not still talking about her today?
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My understanding is that she was a deliberately and carefully chosen test case, not just a random citizen who one day had had enough. Which in no way diminishes her heroism or bravery, but it’s certainly not an accident that she’s famous, it’s due to a conscious and informed decision to stand up for her rights.
The Dionne quintuplets, two of whom are still alive, didn’t choose the spotlight. Their parents really didn’t either. Much of Quintland, etc. was the work of the province of Ontario, as a morale-building and money-raising gimmick during the Depression.
They would still be considered a medical curiosity were they to be born nowadays; AFAIK they are the only known set of identical quintuplets ever born.
The Hensels have been in the public eye since they were about 6 years old, when they were on the cover of Life magazine, and the subject of a story in Time at about the same time. I loved their reality show, because they were so NORMAL.
I wasn’t aware of that. I thought she just said “I’m not taking this bullshit any more” and stood (or sat) her ground.
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It’s a weird combination of stuff–neither a shot-from-the-blue, nor a totally planned event. From my understanding, she worked with the local NAACP (as secretary), most likely knew about discussions about finding a perfect test case, wasn’t directly included on such plans, had attended training at the Highlander Research and Education Center (a place where a lot of folks got training for civil rights protesting), had never completely planned to be a test case, knew what it’d look like to be a test case, and on that afternoon made her move.
She totally knew what she was doing, though, which IMO makes her even more awesome.
That is my understanding too.
Zapruder was the first name that came to mind when I saw the thread title. I subsequently thought of Laura Keene, who certainly sought (and achieved) some measure of fame as an actress, but made the history books because she happened to be starring in Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater on the night Abraham Lincon was assassinated.
Going on american idol hardly qualifies as accidental fame.
Many involved in questionable police shootings in recent years probably qualify and are rallying cries for many recent civil rights protests.
from the OP:
My first thought on reading the OP was John Smeaton. He’s probably not famous outside Scotland now, but for a week in July 2007 he was known internationally.
He went to work one morning as a baggage handler at Glasgow Airport. He heard explosions, saw a vehicle on fire trying to ram the terminal building, ran towards it and kicked a terrorist in the balls.
By that evening interviews with him describing how Glasgow reacts to terrorists (“We’ll set about ye”) was on every international news channel.
So, for the spirit of the OP in terms of utterly mundane existence to international celebrity in the blink of an eye, I think it fits.
obv. a researcher or scientist … Issac Newton, Einstein, etc.
How is their fame accidental? It’s the absolutely predictable outcome of their hard work.